


Let’s Give the Boy a Hand

by cloudings



Series: Let’s Hear It For My Baby! [2]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Drinking Games, First Kiss, First Time Blow Jobs, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, Love Bites, M/M, Richie is 18 and Eddie is 17, Truth or Dare, Underage Drinking, i didn’t expect to make it so soft, this is .... so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 17:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20911370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudings/pseuds/cloudings
Summary: After finding each other on Grindr and sharing a couple of saucy texts and a phone call that would make a nun faint, Richie and Eddie find each other in the clubhouse, and they... talk. Sure, they talk. Let’s call ittalking.Beverly, meanwhile, discovers that none of the Losers have ever gotten drunk, and what’s being a teenager without breaking a few drinking laws? Ben has a free house, and Eddie has never been more afraid of a game of Truth or Dare in his entire fucking life.





	Let’s Give the Boy a Hand

**Author's Note:**

> JSYK: you will probably need to read the first part of this in order to understand this one!
> 
> I aaaaaaa wrote a second part. the infamous day after the night before. they’re fuckign nerds and they’re FECKING in love :>>>>> hehe ... ive watched IT ch2 four or five times now and i die every time. 
> 
> title again is taken from Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear It For The Boy” !!!!!!!
> 
> come talk to me on twitter @greyclouding !
> 
> thank u so much for reading... this is way longer than the first one so forgive me !!!

It feels like he holds his breath all the way there. If he allows himself an exhale then he might not ever stop, and he’s left his pump at home today. The absence of it makes him anxious, and his fingers are thrumming against his leg as he maneuvers through the winding trees, careful to avoid any webs or piles of dog shit on the ground.

His head feels like it’s going three hundred miles per hour and all he can think about is _ Richie, Richie, Richie, embarrassed, Richie. _He can’t bring himself to forget the night before, a blessed yet sinful activity that made Eddie literally pass out. It was the best orgasm he’d ever had, with Richie’s sweet voice muttering fantasies and encouragement; raspy from the evening and croaky from the phone. 

Eddie opens up the hatch to the clubhouse and climbs down the steps after throwing down his backpack. His nerves prick up as he sinks into the darkness alone, but he’s been there often enough now to deem it safe. He smacks the goosebumps on his arm and wills them to go away as he reaches up on his tip-toes to shut the hatch again.

“Hey,” somebody says, and Eddie almost jumps right out of his skin. He instinctively grabs onto the stepladder and hides behind it for a second, before the presence is noted and he rolls his eyes at their laughter.

“Fuck you guys,” he responds, and sticks his tongue out at Stan. 

“How’s the face?” he asks. Beverly is sitting on the ground next to him, flicking her lighter on and off. She’s been trying to quit recently. Eddie takes one look at the small pile of stubbed out cigarettes on the ground.

“Okay. Thanks. And thanks for the makeup, Bev.” He smiles down at her. “My mom didn’t notice anything.”

“Really?” she laughs, pushing herself to her feet. She leans in close to his face, inspecting. “You didn’t blend it. You want me to teach you?”

“Maybe, sometime.” He shrugs, and heads for his hammock. There’s already a body in it. He hesitates for a moment, biting down on his lip and letting the memories flood back, before he turns around to the other two. “Is Richie dead or something?”

Beverly chuckles and Stan groans. “He came in and passed the fuck out,” he tells him. “Wouldn’t stop snoring.”

“Somebody needs to sort out that boy’s sleeping schedule,” Bev says, and Eddie’s face flushes red. “He was up at like three last night. Yeah, it’s Saturday, but it happens on weekdays too.”

“Let him suffer,” Stan commands, and Eddie can’t help but snort. 

“He’s in my freaking hammock.”

“Push him out.”

Eddie does not push him out of the hammock. After all, it‘s sort of his fault that Richie was so tired in the first place, he supposes. But he’s pretty damn tired himself, if he’s honest, and he’s not about to let Richie get in the way of his rest. The floor here is too damn gross and hard. 

He climbs up onto the hammock and lays down with his feet next to Richie’s face. He shimmies a little, forcing the other boy to give him some room, and tries to focus on relaxing. Richie is so tall that his feet go above Eddie’s head, and instead he has his ankles at eye-level, wearing mismatched socks that bring a smile to his face. 

“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Bev speaks up. “We should all go to Europe this Summer.”

“Europe?” Eddie frowns. Like any of them could afford that. 

“Yeah, think of how freaking gorgeous it is!” she swoons, a large grin over her face, leaning her body back on one hand. “We could see London, Paris, _ Amsterdam. _” She winks.

“What’s in Amsterdam?” 

“Anne Frank’s house, the Van Gogh Museum, the canals,” she lists off, but she’s still smiling. 

“Weed,” Stan finishes for her. “And a red light district.”

Eddie snorts. “First of all, weed is gonna be legal in Maine in like, a year, so. And second of all, prostitution? Really? Just imagine the diseases. Think of those brothels. That’s disgusting.”

“I think Eddie has a Hollywood perception of prostitution,” Bev teases. “Fine, but still. I wanna see Paris before I die. Imagine how romantic it is.”

“Yeah, the miles worth of catacombs under the city really turn me on,” Stan says. 

“Drinking age is only eighteen, though,” she fires back. “We could go in August, and all of us could drink until we black out.”

Eddie clears his throat. 

“And we would have to buy the drinks for little Eddie over here. Sorry,” she says, and she doesn’t sound very sorry. 

“Alcohol is overrated, anyway,” he tells her. “What exactly is the point of drinking so much that you just throw up everywhere? And freaking destroying your liver, by the way?”

“Have you never been drunk, Eddie?” she asks, a smirk sneaking onto her face. 

He frowns, and asks, “You have?” 

“Oh my god!”

“It’s really not that big of a deal, you know, so.” 

“You would be an _ adorable _drunk.”

“I so would not. And also, Stan has never been drunk either, so make fun of him too. And Richie, and Ben, and Mike, and Bill!”

Richie groans in his slumber and rolls over. He drapes his arm over Eddie’s legs. 

“None of you guys have ever drank?” Bev inquires seriously. 

Stan shrugs. “I’m Jewish.”

“Jewish people drink alcohol, Stanley,” Eddie says.

He folds his arms. “So you’re an expert on the Torah, now, Eddie?”

“You guys totally need to drink,” she interrupts. “You have to have _ some _cool high school experience.”

“Excuse me, I got punched in the face yesterday, and I think that’s cool enough.” 

Beverly rolls her eyes and pulls her phone out of her back pocket, tapping away at it. 

“Jews can totally drink.”

“Shut up.”

Beverly places her phone back into her pocket. Eddie’s suspicious of how excited she looks. “Ben has a free house tonight,” she says. “His mom’s out of town. You guys are totally getting wasted.”

“Wait, Bev,” Eddie complains. “I don’t want to throw up. How do I not throw up?”

“Drink water after every gulp of booze?” She shrugs, and pulls herself to her feet. “I’m gonna go and get our products. Any requests, ladies?”

They both stay quiet. 

“That’s a no.” 

She laughs, tugs off her shower cap, and waves as she climbs out of the clubhouse, and Eddie waits until the hatch is shut to gulp. 

“She’s persuasive,” Stan comments.

“She’s still scary,” Eddie replies. 

They look at each other for a moment, and burst out laughing. 

“Is this seriously happening?” he bursts out, hands shooting up to his head. “Are we gonna get drunk tonight?”

“I guess so,” Stan says, a little breathless. “I hope it doesn’t go to shit, anyway. I’m just glad it’s not happening in my house.”

“We’ll help Ben clean up,” he promises, though the thought of scrubbing up puke from the floor makes him nauseous.

They talk for a while about stupid things: new video games and what the hell is going on with the world at the moment, and just as they’re getting into a heated debate about the new _ Animal Crossing _ game, Eddie feels something moving on his leg.

He almost leaps out of the hammock; his brain is screaming at him _ SPIDER, SPIDER, SPIDER! _and his breath is already starting to come in short. His hands draw into fists against Richie’s legs as he forces himself to look down and check, and —

Oh, fucking _ gross. _

“Richie!” Eddie yells, shoving his leg slightly and pulling his knees up to his chest, rubbing his ankle over Richie’s shirt. There’s a pool of saliva smeared up his leg and Eddie thinks it might just be worse than the sunscreen. 

Richie jerks himself awake and screams at the unexpected contact. He tries to push Eddie away from him until he realises just who it is that he’s sharing the hammock with, and his face turns a beautiful shade of red. He pushes up his glasses (Eddie can see from here how dirty and gross they are) and stares at him, a cheesy, stupid, adorable grin breaking across his face as if he’s just won the lottery. Eddie doesn’t know why he looks like that. It makes him feel dizzy; like his head is going to fall off and his returning smile is going to cause cracks in his lips. 

His smile drops when he remembers they’re not alone, and he gently nudges Richie’s chest with his knee. 

“You freaking drooled all over me, asshole.”

“Good morning to you too, Eds,” Richie whispers. 

Eddie’s heart does a flip in his chest and he bites his lip to stop himself from smiling again. Richie’s morning voice is raspy and sexy and _ cute. _He wants to hear it more of it; he could bathe in the sensation that it makes him feel. His voice is a sort of blanket, and it makes Eddie feel cozy and settled and like he never wants to leave. He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

“You sound like shit,” he says instead. 

“You didn’t mind that last —”

“Stan!” Eddie shouts, interrupting him mid-sentencing, hoping that it’s not too late. He clears his throat and arches his neck to look back at him. Sitting on the floor, staring at his phone with dead eyes, Stan looks like he doesn’t have the time of day for them. 

“What?” he drawls out. 

“Bev just text me,” he lies. “She wants help with shopping for the party.”

“Okay. Cool. Go help, then.”

Eddie sucks in a breath. “My face hurts.”

“Richie can go.”

Richie groans. “I just woke up!”

Stan gives Eddie a look so dark that he thinks he might be trying to use _ the force _ on him. Eddie gulps and screws up his mouth into a _ sorry, dude _gesture, and watches as Stan pushes himself to his feet. 

“I’m gonna spike your drink tonight, Kaspbrak,” he tells him monotonously, places a hand on his kippah to steady it, and places one foot onto the ladder. 

“Can’t wait! Thank you!” Eddie calls after him. The hatch closes with a _ slam _ and dust sprinkles over the clubhouse, including Eddie and Richie.

Richie sneezes into his hand and wipes it on the underside of the hammock.

“You’re gross.”

“I can be grosser,” he told him, and he pushes his glasses up again. It looks like he’s sweating. “When did you get here?”

“Not long ago. You were in my hammock, so.”

“You mean this hammock? The hammock with my snot all over it? Pretty sure this hammock is _ mine _ now.”

Eddie scoffs, nodding along ironically. “Oh, yeah, sure. You just drooled all over my freaking leg, that doesn’t mean it belongs to you, does it?”

“It can,” Richie says, and Eddie stammers over his words as he watches him pull his hoodie up to his chin, dancing tentative and yet hesitant fingertips over the skin on his calf. Richie continues, tugging on the strings and minimising the visibility of his face. Eddie doesn’t like it, he wants to see more, but the warmth of his tone makes him feel comfy again. “I really, um, liked what we did. You know. Last night.”

He bows his head and peers up at Richie through his lashes. Only the other boy’s glasses are visible now, the rest of his face covered by the red hood. Eddie would bet that he’s blushing as much as he is right now, and kind of wishes that he had some protection from sight as well.

“I did as well,” Eddie murmurs, and as much as he wants to, he can’t bring himself to make eye contact. “I’m sorry that I passed out.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Richie replies. It’s hard to understand through the fabric. “I’m kinda embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed of what?”

“I don’t know, the things I was — The things that I was saying… I feel like I admitted too much.”

Eddie can’t help it. He lets out a small laugh. “And I didn’t? I– Richie…” His voice drops to a whisper. “Richie, I need to wash my mouth out with soap…”

“I told you that I – that I jerked myself off looking at photos of you, Eds.”

“And _ I _ told _ you _that I had to literally run to the shitty public bathroom to jerk myself off just because I’d been in close contact with you for like, ten minutes.” He folds his arms stubbornly. “I think mine is definitely more embarrassing, thanks.”

“That’s not embarrassing,” Richie tells him, and though his voice has warmed up to speech now, it still has a hint of deep grogginess to it. “That’s hot as fuck.”

“And you doing that isn’t?” he squeaks. Shakes his head. Gulps. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

A pause. “Which part?”

“All of it,” he says at once. “You. You touching my legs, you messaging me, you calling me, you telling me that you’d been touching yourself whilst listening to me talk, and — and listening to me tell you how I’d wanna kiss you if you were there with me, and telling me that you want to kiss my neck and my jaw, and, and —” He takes a deep breath, “— Just _ you _, Jesus Christ.”

Richie seems to be contemplating. At least, that’s all that Eddie can assume, considering the hidden identity, blinding him to all and any emotions whilst he spits his goddamn heart out right in front of him. It’s not fair. 

“I – I appreciate the sentiment,” he says, “but you can call me Richie, you know.”

It takes Eddie a moment. Maybe two. Three. When he coins on, he grinds his teeth together and rolls his eyes so hard it actually aches a little bit. 

“I told you that you can stop making jokes in moments like this!” he exclaims, and sits upright so that, for once, Eddie has a height advantage. “Rich, you don’t have to avoid talking about things with me.”

He nods slowly, his hands hesitantly withdrawing from the string on his hoodie. His face is a little visible, now. “I know,” he says quietly, “It’s just… easier than actually saying stuff. And I’m a natural born comedian.”

Eddie huffs a chuckle. “Did you mean everything that you said?” he asks. “_ Everything?” _

He watches Richie lick his hips and nod fervently, the corner of his mouth tilting upwards as if he wants to crack another joke but deciding against it. 

“Everything,” he says. 

Eddie takes a deep breath, and suddenly places down two hands either side of Richie’s head. Using the element of surprise as an advantage, he takes the opportunity to swing one of his legs over Richie’s thighs. 

The boy beneath him is so stunned and in awe that he allows the hood to fall away from his face completely, exhibiting the rosy cheeks and wide, fascinated eyes, baring massive pupils and obvious emotion. His lips are parted and Eddie can tell how fast he’s breathing when he leans down. Their faces are inches apart. 

It’s a comfortable position. Eddie can really find no fault in it; his legs are comfortable and his view is brilliant, and the hammock makes for an easily accessible way to force Richie to look at him. He’s scared, of course he’s scared, both of them are, and it’s obvious. Eddie chews on his lip for a second. Two. Three. He squeezes his knees against Richie’s outer thighs.

Richie visibly gulps and Eddie wishes that he could read his mind. There’s so much going on behind those glasses that he hides, and Eddie’s not sure whether he’s thinking about throwing him off of his lap or burying his hands in his hair. 

Then he raises one hand. Eddie almost flinches; the last time a hand had been directed at him, he’d been punched in the face, but he knows Richie would never do anything like that. The long fingers slide up from the line of his jaw to cup his cheek, and he hopes that Richie doesn’t comment on how hot his face feels. 

“Eddie,” Richie says, and with such a serious tone that it takes Eddie out of his small trance for a moment. Richie’s fingers curl against his skin. “If we do this, I need you to promise something.”

“Sure. Yes. Anything.” 

“We can’t let this ruin us.”

It’s a moment before it hits Eddie, and when it does, his lip wobbles. He knows what Richie is worried about. He’s heard tales of this sort of thing ruining friendships, and really, Eddie didn’t know if he’d be able to survive without Richie as his best friend. The very thought brings goosebumps to his previously blushing body, and his hands automatically curl into themselves. He gulps. 

At the same time as the anxiety manifests inside of him like an uncoiling snake, there’s a part of Eddie that knows different. That knows _ better. _He’d be in this position with Richie forever if it was possible, as annoying and loud mouthed as he is, and he can’t think of a thing in the world that would change that. 

And he can’t bring himself to speak. He’s not sure of what he could possibly even say. There are no words to illustrate the certainty that he feels about their budding relationship, the changes that are coming, and no matter how many times he opens and closes his mouth like a guppy, it’s impossible to articulate.

Instead, he breathes in one huge gulp of oxygen, screws his eyes shut as tight so tight that he sees stars, and purses his lips in a way that he’s sure is wrong. He leans in as fast as he can so that Richie doesn’t expect it and connects their lips as one. He hears a sharp gasp beneath him, and the source’s body quickly tenses. 

Eddie doesn’t feel like Eddie Kaspbrak at that moment. He doesn’t feel like that small, weak boy who his mother had always made him out to be; who Henry and his group had always made him feel like. The action he’d taken was so _ bold _ and so _ scary _ and so freaking _ unlike him _ that the idea to pull back and apologise twenty times over burns into his very skin. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t dare. Eddie feels fucking terrified, but at the same time, he feels so incredibly liberated. 

Eddie doesn’t feel like Eddie Kaspbrak; Eddie feels like he’s fucking _ free _for once in his life. 

Richie is still frozen beneath him. Eddie can’t exactly see at the moment, but he’s rather sure that his eyes are wide open; and if there’s anything that Eddie has learnt from countless romantic comedies and soppy sitcoms, it’s that you shouldn’t open your eyes while kissing someone.

Eddie pulls away from the selcouth ‘kiss’ quickly, allowing himself vision once again and loosening his lips. He wants to chuckle when his theory is proven true; Richie is staring right at him. He looks like a deer in the headlights. 

“For the love of God,” Eddie stresses. “I promise. I told you that I’d promise anything. I — I like you a lot, you freaking dick, so could you _ please _just — Mmf!”

Richie’s eyes are closed this time, and it’s Eddie’s that are wide with surprise. He falters for a second, and he wobbles to stay upright on his knees. Richie’s chest is pressed flat against his, the other boy sitting up straight — his hands are hesitantly reaching for Eddie’s waist, the tips of his fingers brushing over Eddie’s sweater. 

It’s clear to Eddie that Richie has more of an idea of how to go about this than he does. He waits for only a second before pulling away, searching for approval in Eddie’s gaze. Eddie nods minutely, and he lifts his hands up to Richie’s gentle face. He’s staring at him so singularly, like there’s nothing else in the world that exists, and it makes Eddie feel butterflies in his tummy. Richie’s skin isn’t as soft as it looks; it’s covered in tiny bristles that have been recently shaved. It hits home how grown they are. 

Richie leans forward once more, his face still cradled by Eddie’s hands, and he kisses him again. His lips feel like they’re tingling, and he can finally relax and allow his eyes to flutter shut. Eddie’s thumbs brush over Richie’s cheeks again and he preens towards him, aching for just a little bit more.

It’s Richie that begins to further the kiss. He separates his lips – only a tiny bit – so that he can capture Eddie’s bottom lip between his own. Eddie worries for a second on how to respond to it, but finds that it comes almost naturally. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s just Richie. 

He opens his mouth up to him and finds that, when Richie begins to kiss him (_ properly _ kiss him, like Eddie’s always dreamt of), he feels another _ pang _ in his groin, which isn’t helped by the sensation of Richie’s hands maneuvering to grab hold of his waist, settling there like it’s something that they always do. His hands are so big. Eddie’s obsessed. 

_ This is what a kiss should be, _he thinks, as he tilts his head slightly to his right. He’s completely lost in it. He knows that if one of their friends came back in through that trapdoor right now, he wouldn’t notice a thing. Hell, an asteroid could hit the neighbouring city and cause all kinds of Hell; Eddie doesn’t believe that anything could drag him away from this bliss. That’s what it is, he concludes, bliss. 

But that’s when he discovers his very first taste of Richie Tozier’s tongue, and he can safely say that he has never known anything so beautifully normal to him. Richie doesn’t taste of cigarettes. He doesn’t taste of mint, either, nor the fruity-flavoured gum that he always seems to be chewing on. He tastes like sugary cereal that everybody enjoys whenever they sleep over his house. He tastes like sweet candy and a little like sleep. But he doesn’t taste unnatural; it’s not a fairytale or a fantasy. It’s Richie. It’s just so naturally Richie. 

Richie’s tongue is soft. It delves through the barrier of Eddie’s lips and dances with his own, and Eddie really has no freaking clue what he’s meant to be doing with it, but it feels good, so he keeps doing what he’s doing. The more he feels Richie’s tongue slide against his own, the more he feels inclined to give back. 

He’d normally feel gross about it all. Swapping spit with somebody isn’t exactly the nicest phrasing in the world, but that’s essentially what it is. But, oddly, Eddie isn’t very bothered about that at the moment. Richie’s one of the least hygienic people that Eddie knows, but right now he’s half-swallowing his tongue and he couldn’t give less of a fuck. Richie’s palms are inching up underneath Eddie’s sweater now. Richie just sneezed on that hand. Eddie doesn’t care; his hands feel nicer on his bare skin than a hot bath. 

It’s an accident, really, when he does it. It’s a reaction unlike any other that he’s experienced. The hands are just all over his back and they don’t exactly _ tickle _but it’s a sensation that he’s never felt before, and it makes him lose his head a little bit. And Richie’s mouth is still moving against his, hot and wet, and his fingers feel like they’re sending electricity all through his body and he just can’t help it — 

_ “Ah!” _

Eddie’s breathing accelerates and he releases a whimpering sound that he immediately wants to take back. He breaks the long kiss to slap a hand over his mouth, sure that the colour of his face matched the colour of Richie’s hoodie. 

Pulling back from the kiss may have left him aching for more, but the sight that it gave him couldn’t be compared to anything. Richie’s cheeks were dusted with red and his lips were a pretty kissed-pink, almost swollen and definitely worn. His eyes look hazy and lidded and he’s definitely as distracted as Eddie is. They’re both staring at each other’s mouths. 

“That,” Richie says, and his voice is just barely above a whisper, making Eddie feel close. “That was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” 

His hands sink down from caressing Eddie’s back to holding both of his hips, and he takes one long look at his face again before he leans backwards, returning to his position from earlier. He gazes at him; at all of him. His eyes are hungry and he bites his lip at the sight of him, and Eddie’s reminded that he’s snug on Richie’s lap, and he feels something poking him. He’s not sure if it’s Richie’s phone. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, and Eddie can’t even begin to think of anything to say to that; let _ alone _when he continues his train of thought, telling him, “You look like you’re about to ride me.”

Eddie almost says _ beep, beep, _because it’s exactly the kind of thing that Richie would say if they were play-fighting and he’d rolled on top of him, just to throw him off. But they aren’t playing. Richie’s voice is dead fucking serious and it sends shivers down Eddie’s spine. 

“Is that something you want?” he asks him. His palms slide down Richie’s chest, resting spread on his abdomen. He shifts his hips and feels the grip on them tighten considerably. 

“Fuck yes, it is,” Richie breathes. He’s staring at Eddie’s shorts. They both know that he’s hard as fuck. “I used to watch porn and imagine it was me and you.”

Eddie sucks in his breath. He unwillingly jerks his hips at the words, so caught up in just hearing them spoken and imagining the scene. Just picturing Richie in his familiar bedroom, gripping himself, sliding his hand over his dick whilst dreaming of it being Eddie in its place. It’s overwhelming. 

They both groan quietly at the movement, though, and it makes him repeat it. He rolls his hips downwards and the pressure against his groin does the trick; he bites down on his lip as pleasure shoots through his body. The face that Richie makes is fantastic.

“Used to?” 

Richie gives him a little grin; one that sets Eddie’s heart aflame. He hums in consideration, and says, “When I say used to, I mean that I still do. Like, a lot. Like… Whenever I fucking touch myself, I think of you. There’s not a fucking moment when I don’t think of you.”

“I wanna know what you—” he starts, and has to stop himself from whining out loud when Richie bucks his hips upwards. “I wanna know what you wanna do to me.”

“I hope you have time,” Richie tells him. “There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do with you.” 

Eddie breathes deeply. His dick twitches when he rolls his hips down again. He can hear his pulse in his ears. 

“I can feel you,” he says. “I can feel you against me.”

“I’m never not hard when I’m around you, you know.” His grip is bruising and comforting. His toes curl and his jaw drops. He hopes that it marks him. His skin always leaves so many prints. “God, it’s like I see you and I feel like I’ll never be calm again.”

“I owe you,” Eddie hums. “For last night.” 

He dips his fingers beneath the waistband of Richie’s jeans and waits for permission to go further. 

“Shit,” is the eloquent response. “What do you wanna do for me, Eds?”

He lets the nickname slide. Just this once. “You said that you wanted to cum on my face.” 

Richie goes blank. His face is beet-red and his lips are parted in awe once again. He nods numbly. “Yes, please.”

Eddie leans down and presses their lips together once again, sliding his fingers through the curly mop on top of his head and rocking their hips along together as he does so.

He feels, from this position, the way that their erections slide alongside one another, the friction making them both grumble and whimper into each other’s mouths. Eddie’s not too sure how his first kiss went so quickly from innocent to this. He’s so glad that he doesn’t care. 

He slips off of the hammock, ignoring Richie’s short-lived protests, which cease the very moment that he watches Eddie sink to his knees. Eddie watches as he shoves his glasses up his face again and tries to control his breathing. 

“You sure?” Richie asks as he throws his legs over the side of the hammock, swaying a little in the air as he does so until Eddie catches his legs. He slides his hands up his legs.

“Yes,” he says confidently. He’s never done anything like this before; but, he hopes, if it’s anything like kissing, he’ll get the hang of it. As long as it’s Richie.

Only if it’s Richie.

Eddie reaches upwards and toys with the button on Richie’s jeans, popping it open with one hand as he keeps his eyes on the face of the man above him. He watches Richie lick his lips and wonders whether he’s thought of this moment as often as Eddie has. As he begins to unzip Richie’s jeans, he wonders how many times he’ll ever get to do this in the future. He doesn’t know if he’ll like it yet, but he’s damn sure that he’s going to want to do it again. 

There’s only one layer left now between Richie’s dick and Eddie. His underwear is a lovely cerise colour and they fit him… They fit him. Very well. Eddie clears his throat, asks, “Can I touch it?” and doesn’t take his eyes off of the bulge.

“Yes,” Richie responds instantly. “Please. Look, he already knows you. He’s like a meerkat. His name’s Timon.”

Eddie rolls his eyes but reaches out to place his palm on top of Richie’s erection. They both stop breathing for a moment, because this is so fucking real. Eddie is holding Richie’s erect penis in his hand, though separated by a thin layer, and he knows that there’s no going back from this. All or nothing.

He burrows his fingers beneath the elastic of Richie’s underwear and pulls them down before he has the chance to talk himself out of it. Then, there it is. Hard, protruding, just above his face. Eddie takes a moment just to appreciate it. Of course he’s seen other people’s penises before in real life, but never have they been this erect, nor this alluring. The only other times that he’s seen someone else’s boner is in porn, and he’d known that those were just exaggerated. But he’d liked looking at them. He thinks that he prefers Richie’s by a landslide.

He’s cut, like Eddie is, and has one thick vein running underneath the skin on the underside. It as itself isn’t an overwhelming size, though that’s not to say that it’s not impressive. He wants to sulk about it, almost. The fact that all of Richie’s stupid jokes about the size of his dick are basically true is aggravating, and he knows that he won’t be able to get this sight out of his mind for the remainder of the time that he hears them. But still. He can’t take his wide eyes off of it. He’s salivating. 

He can feel Richie’s eyes on him, piercing him, willing him to have some kind of reaction to the scene before him. Eddie wouldn’t know what to say if there was a gun to his head. Maybe _ you’re hot _ or _ I love it _but they all seem too bland of phrases to actually even begin to articulate the thoughts running through his head and the arousal pumping through his blood.

He wipes his hands on his shorts absentmindedly (they’d gotten very sweaty) before raising them upwards. He runs one finger along the vein that he can see and licks his lips at Richie’s sobering whimper, his eyes flickering up to see his hands balled into fists at his sides. 

“Please,” Richie breathes. “C’mon, stop teasing me.”

Eddie wasn’t aware that he _ had _been teasing him, but he smirks softly as their eyes meet before he wraps his fingers around the base of it. The tips of his middle finger and his thumb barely connect, and he doesn’t know whether or not that’s because he has small hands or because Richie has a big dick. 

He jerks into the grip and his head tilts back a little bit, releasing deep breaths and small grunts. Eddie’s own dick twitches at the sight, but he’s too focused on his partner to give a damn. He wants to make him feel the best that he can. 

When he leans upwards and presses a tentative, testing kiss to the slit on the tip of it, Richie actually lets out what sounds like a small sob and Eddie can see his hands shaking. The taste is unlike anything he’s ever known, he thinks as he licks his lips afterwards, and it’s actually not off-putting or disgusting. He places both of his hands around it now and slides them up and down once. Richie’s breathing is in stutters.

Eddie places the head of it to his flattened tongue, and he curls it against the flesh, lapping at it like an ice-lolly. It’s far hotter and more bitter than one, but seems to drip all the same, because a second later, Eddie can taste something a little different. He pulls back to see recognisable small pearls of white and he gathers it up on the pads of his fingers to use as lubrication. He slides his fingers along the shaft once again, letting the feeling of minimal skin against skin send a buzz through him. He licks the tip of it again, his tongue more pointed this time, and lets it swirl around the head. He’s getting used to the taste. 

“_ Yes, _ ” Richie pants above him, “ _ Eds, _ oh fucking _ hell. _”

He glows under the praise and it urges him on further. He waits for just a moment, allows his eyelids to flutter shut until he can feel his eyelashes on his skin, and settles his lips around Richie’s dick. There’s not much in his mouth, only the tip, and it makes him want to freak out about how much bacteria may be crawling into his mouth, but he doesn’t care. He likes how hot and heavy it feels against his tongue and he likes how Richie’s staring down at him with lust growing in his gaze. He doesn’t want to stop. 

He’s seen people do this in porn and they always seem to have it down. They don’t seem to be hesitant or unsure about what the next action is supposed to be and they seem to _ love _sucking dick. Eddie doesn’t know if he’ll be able to do it like they do; taking all of it down his throat without gagging or coming up for a breath every thirty seconds. He doesn’t think Richie will mind, though, because he’s looking at him like he’s a pile of gold, and his bottom lip is so raw from being bitten that it’s a bit concerning. But Eddie wants to try the best that he possibly can for Richie, so he screws his eyes shut once again and allows his wet lips to dive further down his cock. He can feel every ridge beneath them and he traces his tongue backwards and forwards as he takes it for some extra stimulation. He’s got just over half of it in his mouth and down his throat when he has to stop, his throat protesting, and he retracts his head with a gasp. 

“Are you okay?” he’s asked quickly. Eddie blinks furiously, wondering why his eyes are stinging. “You don’t have to force yourself, Eds.”

“I’m not,” he argues, pouting. “I want it all in my mouth. Just let me try.”

Who was Richie to argue with such a request? 

Eddie takes a deep breath and takes it back into the wet heat of his lips, electing to try and proceed slower than he had done so beforehand, and so he sinks down inch by inch. By the time that his nose is nestled in the short curls at the base of Richie’s groin, his fingernails are digging into Richie’s hips and the poor man isn’t complaining at all. He wants to apologise for how deep they’d sank into his flesh, but when he looks up at him, he couldn’t seem less bothered. He’s breathing almost as fast as Eddie does when he needs his asthma pump and his knuckles have turned a sickly pale colour. He’s concerned, for a second, before he remembers that Richie’s never done this before, and Eddie can only imagine how quickly he’s going to orgasm the moment Richie touches him. He’s actually very impressed by how long he’s lasted.

Eddie begins to raise his head once again, but thinks back to all of the things that he’s watched beforehand. After a moment, he sinks back down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Richie’s dick is sliding in and out of his lips how one would usually fuck their fist, and the _ sounds _ that Eddie’s hearing Richie make are unlike any he could have ever imagined. The boy above him is gasping and whimpering so lewdly and it goes straight to Eddie’s dick, making him want to go further, and when he moans around Richie’s dick for no reason other than it feels _ good _to make him feel good, Richie elicits a moan that would make a pornstar shiver. 

Eddie’s hands are almost wet now. Coupled with the sweat, they’re almost slick with his own spit from where he’d held onto Richie’s dick after having his mouth there. He does it almost without thinking, reaching downwards, and he takes his balls in his hands gently, rolling them in his fingers. Richie lists off more swear words in that moment than either of them have ever said in their lives _ combined, _and he seems to lose control a little bit. One of his hands fly up to Eddie’s head, burying his fingers within his hair and holding on tightly, and it’s like he has the wheel. Eddie wants to give it to him. 

He stops moving his head and instead reaches up with his free hand to place it atop of Richie’s, making him push his head down. Richie doesn’t say anything; barely even lets Eddie know that he catches his drift. Eddie drops his hand and flutters his eyes shut again, staying stubbornly still. 

He can _ hear _ Richie gulp when he starts to push Eddie’s head downwards, and then a shuddering gasp, a moan, and a quiet, _ “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.” _Eddie hums in response, and Richie seems to like that, too. He tugs on Eddie’s hair hard enough for it to sting a little, and he all but minds, and instead follows his direction. He moves himself along the dick at Richie’s pace, licking to add something to it when he can. When Richie presses Eddie’s face right down to the very bottom of his cock, he gently strokes Eddie’s cheek, as if to comfort him. After staying steadily in that one position for about forty seconds, Eddie feels Richie begin to shake, and his breathing is purely in gasps alone, and he yanks Eddie off of him. 

Eddie takes control of his breathing and wraps his fingers around him again, opening his mouth and fanning his hot breath against the sensitivity of Richie. Richie reaches down, and the hand that had just been in Eddie’s hair now settles instead upon Eddie’s hand, and together they jerk him; fast and hot and wet. 

When Richie cums, it’s with Eddie’s name on his tongue, loud and unashamed. The sticky white fluid lands generously over Eddie’s waiting face, decorating his cheeks and his lips with banners of it, and it seems to be an image that Richie can’t get enough of. He rides out his orgasm to the sight of Eddie on his knees, painted with white, and when he finally finishes with one last groan, he falls sideways back into the hammock.

“Hey!” Eddie complains, and his throat is a little hoarse. He swallows once, clears his throat, and drags himself up to his feet. “Don’t you dare fall asleep.”

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Richie replies lazily. “There’s no other explanation.”

“You’re not dead, you dick. You’re alive, and you have hands.”

Richie raises his hands and holds them before his eyes. They’re shaking a little bit. “I do,” he says. “But they only come out during sunlight.”

Eddie scowls. Fine. He’ll do it the hard way. He pointedly doesn’t look at Richie, but shoves his legs out of the way so that he has room to sit down beside him. It’s an awkward position, considering the hammock makes gravity push them together in the centre, but Eddie sits with his back to the other boy. After a second or two, in which he noted feeling the other boy sit up again, Eddie slides his hand into his shorts. He wonders whether Richie is looking over his shoulder when he hears a small gasp. He smirks. 

“Wait,” Richie chokes out. “I want to do it.”

Eddie takes a deep breath and leans backwards. His back hits Richie’s chest and his head falls against his shoulder. “Do it, then,” he says, “Please.”

Instead of the eager pouncing that Eddie had expected, Richie reaches for Eddie’s face instead of his crotch. He admires him, for a moment, before using his palm and his fingers to wipe up his own remnants from Eddie’s skin. Eddie almost asks what the hell he’s doing when Richie then reaches down and takes Eddie’s dick out of his shorts, and _ oh. _He’s using his own cum as lubricant. He releases a whimper without thinking. 

Richie’s legs are cocooning Eddie’s, his front pressing against Eddie’s back, and the warmth envelopes him. All he can smell, feel and see is Richie. He watches the other’s hand closely as it begins to move, rising and falling on the length of his dick as naturally as if it were his own. 

Richie’s hand just feels so much different and so foreign that even his dick can’t be fooled that the touch is better. Eddie has no idea how he’s going to convert back to regular masturbation when Richie isn’t around, but he’s sure that it’s nowhere near going to satisfy him. His dick might refuse to cooperate ever again unless it’s to be caressed by the large, calloused hands that Eddie’s always wished to hold.

As he admires the way that his fingers move, caressing the tip and dancing along the shaft, he can’t help but picture this as the way that Richie touches himself. Deep into the night, in his darkened bedroom, alone with his grasp firm and desperate, thinking only of Eddie and nothing but him. His hips buck upwards into Richie’s fist at the thought. 

“You like that?” Richie asks, his voice as quiet as a mouse, and Eddie nods with a whine. He lets his head topple backwards further, his dick and Richie’s hand no longer in sight, and he instead allows himself to revel in the moment. He arches his back slightly, humming in appreciation, staring at Richie’s concentrated face. 

“You’re so good at this,” Eddie whispers.

“You sure know how to _ stroke _my ego, Eds.”

He smiles at him, a breathy smile that turns back into an ‘O’ shape when Richie tugs on him particularly tightly, and when he turns to meet his eye, Richie looks entranced. He leans forwards and presses a soft kiss to Eddie’s cheek. 

“_ Mmf _,” he groans, reaching up and entangling his fingers in Richie’s thick curls. When Richie leans in to kiss him, Eddie jerks his head back. 

“You okay? You want me to stop?” he asks, pausing the movements of his wrist, and Eddie frantically shakes his head. 

“Don’t stop,” he breathes, “_ Please _don’t stop, Richie.”

“You don’t want me to kiss you?” he asks, and he sounds a bit hurt, but his fingers begin to dance over his dick again. Eddie’s toes curl as he gasps. 

“I — I do, I —” He pauses, resisting the urge to scream at him to go faster. The pace is agonising. Eddie thinks he’s doing it on purpose. “I just sucked you off, and I — My mouth, you – why would you —”

“Baby,” Richie says, and Eddie practically melts. “Kiss me.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and slaps a hand to the other’s mouth. “That’s so gross,” he moans.

Richie mumbles something against his skin that’s either “_ You love it,” _ or _ “You love me,” _ and both make Eddie shiver a little bit. He removes his hand in a flash once it begins to get licked and he goes to wipe it on his clothes when Richie flicks his wrists in a way that makes him freeze. His gasp is swallowed by the other man’s lips when he lurches upwards. All thought of stopping Richie from kissing him is out of the fucking window. Richie makes him feel so _ loved _ and so _ hot _with purely his attention and it makes him preen; he leans further into the kiss and smiles against him when he feels his tongue again. 

When Eddie’s legs begin to shake and he hums a euphony of small _ “Hah,” _ and “ _ Nn, _” sounds into Richie’s mouth, he’s almost regretful of the giveaway of his impending orgasm. Richie stops kissing him, and though it gives him a beautiful view of the wet lips and dazed eyes, he never wanted it to stop. He whines in protest but it drizzles into a whimper and then into a choked breath, and he feels his eyes roll as he’s overwhelmed with the euphoria,

“Go on,” Richie is murmuring in his ear. His breath is hot against Eddie’s over-sensitised skin and it makes him hum another squeak. “You wanna cum?”

“Yes,” he begs, “_ Please _.”

“Do it,” he says softly, and presses a small kiss to a line on Eddie’s neck as he holds his dick tighter and rubs his finger over the tip, and it’s all so overwhelming and feels _ so good _ that when Richie whispers to him, “ _ Cum for me,” _Eddie just breaks. He throws his head back as he cums, his ejaculate splashing over Richie’s hand. In the back of his mind, he prays to God that he didn’t get any on his clothing. 

They just lay there for a while, breathing out of sync. Eddie’s in too much of a daze that he can’t even be that bothered about how disgusting his crotch area feels; wet and sticking to his underwear, the fabric beginning to chafe. But he’s happy. He’s still not sure that this is all happening. 

“I cannot believe that you kissed me after I sucked your dick,” Eddie mumbles after a while. He toys with Richie’s sleeve, wanting to hold his hand. Their hands are fucking gross right now. 

“It’s only my dick. Now if it were my _ ass, _ that would be a different story.” 

“Oh, fucking disgusting. I’m not kissing you after going anywhere near that.”

“I’d shower! I’m not a complete barbarian.”

“No!”

“I’d do it for you, you know.” 

“Well I don’t wanna kiss you after your mouth has been on my ass either!” 

“So boring,” Richie complains, and he grabs hold of Eddie’s hand, lacing their fingers together. Eddie grumbles but doesn’t let go. 

“We need to wash,” he tells him. “Ben’s gonna kick us out of his house if we turn up like this.” 

Richie shifts and tugs on his little finger. “Oh yeah. I heard you talking about something like that. What’s happening?”

“Bev got all weird when we told her that none of us have ever gotten drunk before,” Eddie explains, “So she said that we’re gonna have a thing tonight. She’s out getting alcohol now.”

He jumps when Richie snorts. “Seriously? Oh my god, this is going to be fucking _ amazing. _Eddie Spaghetti, drunk? Could this day get any better?”

“I’m not gonna be getting drunk, douchebag. I don’t want to throw up, and beer tastes disgusting.”

“How the hell do you know what beer tastes like?” he asks, a smug grin spreading across his face. 

“Shut up,” he responds, but Richie just keeps grinning at him. “I fucking read about it, okay, asshole?”

“Oh, that is adorable,” he coos, pulling him in for a hug and trying to kiss his cheek, ignoring the way Eddie shoves his hands against his face. “This is going to be the best night of my entire life.”

“I hope you die from alcohol poisoning.”

*

They wash up as much as they can in the river before heading back to Richie’s house. Eddie feels sick as he does it, but he forces himself to do so before he has to waddle into the Tozier household with dried cum on his dick and his face. It was Richie’s idea to use the river, of course, and he’d threatened to push Eddie in if he didn’t do it himself. 

(“Just do it! You’re fucking limping!” 

“Fuck off, I would literally rather die than put my fucking dick in that water and I — Get away – Richie — I swear to fucking God, I will fucking rip your dick off — Put me _ down!” _)

He sends his mother a text telling her that he’s staying over at a friend’s house and turns his phone off to ignore the wrath that he knows will come after it. He doesn’t respond to the sympathetic look that Richie gives him and instead makes a comment about how he’s going to have to dig through the piles of muck on his bedroom floor to get Eddie something to wear later on.

When they enter Richie’s bedroom, he’s not wrong in his assumptions about the mess. He has to wade through rags of clothing on the ground to get to where he can flop down on the unkempt bed; acting like a boat in the middle of a sea. 

“How do you live like this?” Eddie asks, hanging off of the side of safety and picking up a crumpled shirt. He holds it up, inspecting it, before gagging and throwing it at the unused laundry basket at the other end of the room. He misses. “This is fucking disgusting.”

“Judging me in my own house, LeBron? What would Sonia say?” Richie responds, bending down to scoop up armfuls of clothes to dump them into the basket. 

Eddie watches his movements closely, leaning back on his arms. “She’d probably agree with me,” he says.

“Those darn Toziers!” Richie verses, putting on a high-pitched voice as he continues to tidy. “Rough, dirty lot, who can never do good! Stay away from them, Eddie Spaghetti!”

“First of all, my mom does not sound like that. You sound like you swallowed a freaking helium balloon. Second of all, my mom would never in her entire life call me _ Spaghetti. _ That’s your weird thing.”

“Damn right it is.” 

There’s a comfortable silence whilst Richie finishes up cleaning his room. Eddie’s not sure whether or not he’d be doing this if he weren't here, in which case he’s very glad that he is. He’d read once that a clean environment is a happy environment. Maybe that was just his mother’s propaganda. 

He busies himself not by going on his phone or by snooping around the bedroom (he’s done that enough times with Bill before), but by simply observing Richie and the way that he operates. Every so often, he would sneak a look back at Eddie, and Eddie would pretend like he was staring at the ceiling instead, neither of them fooling the other. He makes offhand comments every now and then about certain shirts — (“That one’s actually nice, I could have worn that,”) — and underwear — (“Freaking Iron Man, Richie? Really?”) — that he picks up. 

“Here,” Richie says once he’s finished, chucking over three different shirts (from the wardrobe, not the floor) to Eddie. “Take your pick, Eds. They’ll probably be way too big for you, but I hear that that’s in fashion. Maybe you’ll be the new Billie Eilish.”

Eddie stares down at the selection, unimpressed. One has a Hawaiian print, which their friends would immediately recognise as Richie’s, and one has a massive zombie hand on it, which their friends would immediately recognise as Richie’s. He elects the third one. It’s a nice colour, a light blue, and it reminds Eddie of the underwear that Richie had said he was wearing the night before. There’s a _ Thrasher _logo across the chest in white. It looks like it might be long enough to hide his shorts. He throws the other two shirts at his back. 

“Well, I am gonna seduce your dad,” Eddie jokes, and smiles when he hears a laugh drift from Richie. He likes making Richie laugh. 

“Bev just text the group chat,” he tells Eddie, jumping onto the bed next to him. He takes a look at the remaining shirt in his hands and doesn’t look at Eddie when he smiles at it. “Um. Yeah. Bev said we need to be at Ben’s for six.”

“Okay, cool. That means that we’re going to leave at six.”

“You know me so well.” Richie winks. “Well, we have a couple of hours. What do you want to do?”

Eddie takes one look at the expression on Richie’s face and rolls his eyes. “I need a proper shower. There’s river-water on my dick.”

“I can —”

“Nope!”

“But, _ Eds _, I —”

“Not my name!”

Richie groans as he watches Eddie head to his bathroom, and calls,“Towels are in the —”

“I know!”

*

They end up watching a couple episodes of Game of Thrones together, Eddie in only a towel and Richie still wearing his clothes from earlier, minus the hoodie. Richie’s hoodie is lying across Eddie’s chest, and Eddie is pretending like he’s not enjoying how soft it is and like he’s not smelling it every so often. He’s fucking weird. 

Eddie also notes the way that Richie’s hand keeps nervously twitching, not an inch away from his own. He wants to hold his hand too. They’re both too anxious to make the first move in holding the other’s hand, and yet not a couple of hours ago, Richie had his dick in Eddie’s mouth. 

It’s quiet, for a while, and they’re both intently watching the show, when Richie asks, “Do you think Jon Snow is hot?”

It feels like a test, but Eddie’s probably making it more than it is. 

“Well, yeah,” he answers, “But Jaime is hotter.”

Richie makes fun of him for a while for that, but Eddie doesn’t mind. He pokes Richie’s side in return and sticks his tongue out at him, and when they settle again, Eddie’s shifted just a bit closer. He can feel the heat radiating off of the man beside him. They’re both smiling. 

*

When 5:50PM rolls around and neither of them are yet dressed, they have to force themselves to get up from their comfortable position and get moving. Eddie throws the long shirt on over his head and then removes his towel. His theory was correct; it was long enough to surpass his shorts. He pulls them on after his underwear and folds the towel before placing it into Richie’s (now almost _ full _) laundry basket. 

“Well?” Eddie asks, holding his arms out as he turns to face Richie. “What do you think? Does it suit me?”

Richie doesn’t respond immediately. He stares down at Eddie, his mouth hanging open in a pause, and pushes his glasses up as his skin begins to burn a hot red. 

“You,” he says dumbly.

Eddie frowns, and queries, “I?”

“You, uh.” He blinks, and scratches the back of his head. “You look good.”

Eddie allows a small smirk to flutter over his face. It’s enough to just know. 

He follows Richie down to his car and hops in the passenger seat, crossing his legs and turning on his phone once again. Richie hooks up his phone to the aux as he revs the engine. It’s been a while now since he had gotten his license, and he’s been Eddie’s primary source of lifts since. He’s not the _ best _driver by any means, and Eddie certainly tells him so, but it’s better than walking. His own mother had never allowed him to have any lessons. He’s saving up for them. 

As they take off out of the Tozier driveway, the song _ Let’s Hear It For the Boy _starts to play. Eddie grins, his foot beginning to tap instinctively to the beat. 

“Are you listening to my playlist?” he asks.

“Maybe?” Richie responds. “Mine got banned for being too fucking awesome.”

“Mine has dick-growing powers, so you’re welcome.”

“Like I need that,” Richie scoffs. “But maybe I should ask Mrs K her opinion first.”

Eddie splutters and smacks him. He wants to say that he _ does _ need that kind of thing, like would normally say, but now he _ can’t. _He can’t say that because he knows it’s not true and it just brings attention to it. So, instead, he settles for, “Fuck you, dude, you’re so disgusting.”

They bicker like that for the rest of the ride, and it doesn’t cease when they pull up to Ben’s house, only ten or twenty minutes late. 

“No, dude, I’m fucking telling you, it wouldn’t have worked.”

“Think what you want to, Spaghetti-Head. Everybody knows that if Cap had used the infinity stones, he would have lived.”

“No, he wouldn’t have! Remember when freaking Star-Lord almost died after just holding _ one _infinity stone? He’s fucking half a God! As much as Cap is pumped up with shit, he’s still just a human.”

“So then what’s the difference with Dr Hulk? Ex-fucking-actly! They both got flooded with some jacked viagra and now they’re _ super-human. _ That’s why they’re _ superheroes. _”

The door opens before either of them can knock. They’re greeted by an unimpressed face, which, judging by who it belongs to, isn’t such a surprise. 

Stanley raises an eyebrow at both of them before making a point of checking his phone for the time. “Can you two nerds lower your voices?”

“Can you even call the Avengers objectively nerdy anymore?” Richie asks. “Bitches are as mainstream as Shawn Mendez.”

Eddie makes a face. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“Hurry the fuck up,” Stan says monotonously. “They all refused to start until you two arrived.”

Richie throws an arm over Eddie’s shoulders as they walk inside. He tries not to feel hot under it. Some part of him is screaming that all of their friends will _ know _the second that they walk into the lounge, even though Eddie knows that that’s bullshit. Richie has always been this touchy. 

“Relax, fellows!” is shouted through the house, and Eddie can hear bubbles of laughter. “Your knight in shining armour is here!”

“And his damsel in distress,” Bev teases. She’s draped over the long sofa, bare legs folded over and showing off her freckles. She’s wearing a black button up blouse with red polka dots and a red skirt made from what looks like faux leather. It reaches just below her mid-thigh. “I like your dress, Eddie.”

“Shut up,” Eddie groans, wiggling out from underneath Richie’s arm and going to sit next to Ben on the floor. “Richie got my other clothes fucking dirty, so he lent me this.”

He watches the man in question grin at him in response and flop down next to Mike. The two of them bump their fists before Richie settles his head into Mike’s lap. Eddie tries not to stare.

“Did he trip you up?” Ben asks. 

Eddie blinks, and realises that the question is aimed at him. “Huh?”

“Did Richie make you fall over?” he rephrases slowly. At Eddie’s further silence, he chuckles and motions towards his legs. “Your knees are all scraped up.”

“Oh!” Eddie nods quickly. “Yeah. He shoved me as we were getting out of the clubhouse.”

Bev leans over and taps Richie’s leg with disappointment, tutting as she does so. “So, that’s why you were late?”

“Eds had to shower,” Richie says. “He was scared that some of the dirt got into his dick-hole.”

“Okay, fuck you,” Eddie scoffs. “He wanted me to fucking wash in the river.”

“Eddie, we swim in the rivers here regularly,” Mike points out. 

“Thank you, Mikey!” Richie exclaims. “Come here, give me a kiss.”

Eddie watches them, tongue in cheek, his fists clenching against his legs. After a moment, or two, or three, he clears his throat. “Did you manage to get alcohol, Bev?”

She smirks, and says, “You bet your pretty head, I did. Bill’s just gone to grab one of the boxes. We had to hide them whilst Ben’s parents were clearing out.”

“What did you get?” Richie asks.

“Two bottles of vodka, a couple boxes of beer. Stan wanted some red wine.” She smiles down at him. “Oh, and some peach schnapps. I figured that Eddie would prefer something like that, since he was probably thinking that he’d hate the taste of alcohol.”

Eddie feels his face heat up. He says in his defence, “Beer is meant to taste like piss.” 

“It does.” She grins. “Anyway, I was thinking that we could play some games to help us along.”

“We’re not playing spin the bottle,” Richie says quickly. “Not until Eddie has us all tested for herpes.”

He rolls his eyes, but he’s glad for it. The prospect of making out with all of his best friends isn’t really one that’s appealing. Sure, he’s had the odd, silent fantasy about Bill or Mike, but he’s never had the desire to actually act on any of them. That kind of thing, as much as he cringes to think, is reserved for Richie.

Their eyes meet, and Eddie can’t help it when one of the corners of his mouth tilts up. 

“How about _ Never Have I Ever _?” 

The boys collectively groan. 

“No offence, Bevvy,” Richie chimes up, “But just how far do you think you can get in that game with this bunch of virgins?”

Beverly chuckles. “Not everything has to be about sex, Richie.”

“Wait, it doesn’t?”

“We could do _ Would You Rather? _” Stan suggests. “That way, we would only have to think hypothetically, instead of actual experience.”

“Nice idea, Stan. Start thinking about your questions.” She waits for a minute, and then asks, “Where the fuck is Bill?”

“He probably can’t lift the boxes,” Richie snorts. “I’ll go help him.”

“Alright, Muscle-Man,” Stan quips. “Mike should go.”

Richie’s jaw drops in offence just as Mike smiles, shoving Richie’s head away from him to stand. Eddie laughs at him apathetically, making way for Mike to walk past him. 

Richie folds his arms stubbornly. “I don’t know what you think you’re laughing at, Eddie _ Spaghetti Arms. _” 

“I never claimed to be any different, you dick!” 

Mike and Bill finally enter the lounge a while later, carrying two boxes with them both either side. Bill looks like he’s broken a sweat. 

Eddie feels his heart begin to race as they set the boxes down just outside of the circle. Bev leans forwards, grinning. 

“Bon appetit,” she says, “Or whatever the drinking equivalent is. Eddie, there should be some lemonade in the refrigerator to mix with your schnapps.”

He frowns. “I don’t need to mix.”

“It’s pretty strong, you know,” she says, and she has a challenging look on her face that makes Eddie’s blood boil. He’s not a child. The fact that she had to go and get _ special alcohol _ for him because she didn’t think he could _ handle _beer. 

“I’m okay, thanks.” 

He takes the bottle and begins to inspect it as he sits back down, eyes inspecting the label and the colour of the liquid. It _ seems _ to be mostly clear, with just a hint of musk within it. _ 24% _, it says, and Eddie’s not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds relatively low. 

He unscrews the orange lid and takes a tentative sniff of the contents, recoiling slightly. It certainly didn’t smell very sweet. He hopes that the taste is more impressive. 

“Do we have cups?” he asks, peering around the circle, unintentionally catching Richie’s eye. He’s got a beer in his hand and he smirks when he realises the attention. The tip of the bottle edges up to the slick, shining lips that Eddie had had on him only a couple of hours ago. It’s an erotic sight, until the alcohol actually touches his tongue and he cringes outwardly. 

“This shit tastes awful!” he exclaims. “I want what Eds is having!”

“Too fucking bad, Tozier,” Bev laughs at him. She has her own bottle of beer in her hand. She sips from it without flinching. “Go and have a vodka and lemonade if you’re so picky.” 

Richie heads to the kitchen, giving his beer to Ben, who accepts it with a shrug. 

“So,” Bill says, sitting down finally in the circle on the other side of Eddie. “Wh– What are we p– playing?”

“Actually,” the voice on the other side of Eddie pipes up, and when he turns to him, Ben’s smiling, holding up his phone. “When I found out we were going to be drinking tonight, I found a game and saved it. It’s called _ Truth or Drink _. I have some of the questions here.”

“What’s that?” Eddie asks, though he can assume that it’s exactly what it says on the box. 

“I ask you guys questions, you either answer, or you drink.” He scrolls through the list of questions. It’s fucking huge. He catches the words _ kiss _ and _ secret _before he places his phone into his lap, screen down. Eddie gulps. 

“That sounds like a great idea,” Mike says appreciatively. “We can start with that.” 

“Hell yeah,” Bev agrees, sitting up straight. She keeps her legs folded as she flings them over the side of the couch, and Eddie’s sort of glad, otherwise he and Bill would have a direct sight of up her skirt. He doesn’t suppose Bill would really mind. 

“We’ll definitely discover some things about each other,” Richie says as he re-enters the room, and he drops an empty cup onto Eddie’s lap as he passes to take his seat again between Mike and Bev. Eddie presses his lips together to stop himself from letting the rest of their friends seeing him smiling.

He utilises the cup that Richie had fetched for him and pours it full of the schnapps, unsure of what is too much or too little. After screwing the lid back on and placing the bottle back beside him (now three-quarters full), Eddie takes a cautious sip of the liquid. He splutters a little bit: it’s unlike anything he's ever tasted before, but he’s _ sure _that it’s nicer than beer could ever taste. It is strong, though, like Bev had warned, but he can’t bring himself to give in. Lemonade is for pussies.

At that thought, he catches Richie looking at him again, sipping on his vodka and lemonade. He mouths the word, “_ Nice? _” to Eddie, and he nods, before doing the same in turn. Richie just winks at him. 

Eddie doesn’t know what the fuck that means.

“Are we all ready?” Beverly asks. 

Everybody in the circle has a drink in their hand now. Eddie with his schnapps; Bill, Bev, Ben and Mike with a beer each; and Stan with a glass of wine (what the fuck?). Richie is the only one brave enough so far to have attempted to breach the vodka. If the things that Eddie has read about beer are bad, the way that vodka is said to taste is unimaginable.

But Richie seems to like it better than the beer. He sips on it once more before placing it down in front of him, a large, toothy grin across his face and his thumb extended upwards in response to the girl’s question.

“What’s the first question, Ben?”

“Okay,” Ben says, and he clears his throat before picking up and checking his phone. “I got this list off of the internet, by the way, so like, we don’t have to answer all of them.”

“The big, scary inter-web,” Richie taunts, deepening his voice. “The boomers were right all along!”

“Shut up,” Eddie says to him, his hands sweating, eager to get this over and done with. He’s worried about his answers. If he says something and everybody figures out his secret, what is he going to do? And if he drinks instead of answering some of them, won’t that just arouse suspicion?

Ben begins to read off the list. “What’s the last thing on your search history?” he asks.

There’s a moment of stillness and silence, and then, almost like clockwork, everybody whips out their phone at the same time. 

“Well, mine’s just truth or drink questions,” Ben says with a shrug. “Shall we go clockwise?”

Stan next. That means that Eddie’s last. He takes a deep breath, taps the _ Safari _ icon, and reads his most recent search with furrowed brows. He knows _ why _he searched it, he just can’t pinpoint a good explanation o give everybody. 

“Great British Bake Off,” Stan reads lazily. 

“The age of consent in China,” Bev says. “It’s fourteen, by the way.”

“It’s eleven in Nigeria,” Ben tells her. “Which is, you know, weird.”

Richie shoves his glasses up his face. “Mine is ‘how do kippahs stay on?’”

Stan snorts. “Did you find an answer?” 

“Dude, nobody fucking told me that there’s _ velcro _ on the bottom of those things! They’re basically straight out of the _ Adidas _ kids’ section!”

Mike refuses to give his answer. He takes one long swig of his beer instead, much to the dismay of the rest of the group. 

“Oh, come on!” Bev is jeering. “It can't be that bad!”

“I, personally, do _ not _want to know what Mikey here gets his rocks off to, so I am completely content not knowing,” Richie says. Eddie somewhat agrees.

“Mine is B– Bryce Dallas How– Howard,” Bill says, taking the attention off of Mike, who had started to look uncomfortable. At the silence, he adds, “You kn- know, the w- woman from Jurassic W- World?”

“She’s really pretty,” Ben murmurs.

Eddie’s sure that there’s some more meaning to all of that somewhere. 

“Uh, mine is,” Eddie mumbles, reaching back to scratch the back of his head. “Armie Hammer.”

“Oh!” Bev exclaims, nodding. “He’s an actor, right? What’s he been in again?”

“Uh,” Eddie says dumbly, shaking his head. Across the room, Richie bites his lip at him, and he knows at once that they both understand each other. Something that Richie had said to him the night before rings in his mind; _ i ain’t leavin u, this isnt cmbyn. _

“He voices the main antagonist in Cars 3, you uncultured animals,” Richie butts in, saving Eddie’s fucking _ ass. _“Seriously? Jackson fucking Storm? Yikes, guys.”

“Oh,” Bev says again, though this time with a more confused tone. “I could have sworn I knew him from something else…”

“Next question, Benny-Boy!”

Ben regards his phone again. “If you had to choose between going naked or having to announce every single one of your thoughts out loud, which would you choose?”

“Naked,” Bill, Stan and Eddie say at once.

“Whoa, bucko’s!” Richie laughs. “What exactly have you lot got to hide?”

“W- Well, we’re s- seventeen year old b- b- _ boys, _Richie, what do you th- think?” 

“So, what? If _ everyone _is speaking their mind, it’s not gonna be out of the blue to hear about how you wanna fuck Bryce Whats-Her-Name!”

“It never specified that everyone gets affected, you smart-ass,” Eddie interrupts. “It would literally just be you speaking out of turn all the time. Oh, wait.” He raises an eyebrow at Richie, whose jaw drops and places a scorned hand to his heart. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he exclaims, and brings his drink to his lips. He takes one long swig. 

“So you’d just walk around announcing every little thing that comes to your mind?” Eddie asks.

“Well.. I never made my decision. But —” Richie smirks. “— I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Spaghetti-Head. In fact, I think you’ll find that my nude body is actually —”

“Beep, beep, bitch,” Stan stops him, holding his wine glass up. Eddie had both no idea where he’d gotten it, and no idea where the fuck most of that wine had gone. Surely he hadn’t drank that much already?

But, looking around, Eddie found that the rule stating _ only drink when you don’t want to answer _was null and void. Everybody had been sipping at their drinks, no doubt only for the aim of getting as drunk as they can. 

Eddie, nervous, picks up his cup and takes one long gulp from it, not wanting to be left behind. He screws up his face afterwards, but nobody notices. Not even Richie. Everybody is listening to the next question.

“What’s the first thing you would do if you woke up as the opposite sex?”

At once, Bev and Richie both cry out, “Jack off!” and turn to high-five each other in a fit of giggles. At least they’re honest about it. 

Eddie, however, has no idea. He chuckles as Bill says that he’d probably just stare at his own boobs, and how Mike says he’d put out for one of his friends, but he has no idea what to say. 

So he drinks. And it makes him look guilty. 

“My, my,” Bev says, and she sounds too mischievous for his liking. “Little Eddie isn’t as innocent as he seems, is he?”

“I’m totally innocent,” Eddie huffs, “I’m just_ so _ innocent that my mind can’t even comprehend all of the dirty things you guys are spitting out.”

“Here, here,” Stanley cheers.

“Who would you most —” Ben begins, but quickly shakes his head. “Uh, hold on, I’ll find another one.”

“No!” Richie intervenes. “What is it? No chickening out, or you down your drink! New rule!”

“But that only applies to me! That’s not fair!”

“New rule!”

Ben, seeing as he had far too much in his bottle to down at the moment, resigned to reading out the question. “Who would you most like to, you know, bang in this room.”

There’s a silence full of tension that follows and it makes Eddie feel itchy. Well, he knows _ his _ answer, and he’s pretty sure (and hopeful) that he knows Richie’s answer as well. But for the rest of the guys in their group, there’s pretty much only one person that could be said. They all make a point to _ not _look at Beverly. 

“Well, I think that’s pretty damn obvious,” Richie says, and Eddie can see both Bill and Ben’s heads snap to look up at him. “Fellas, gentlelady, I’m pretty sure that we can all agree that everybody’s answer would be Mr Kaspbrak over here.”

The tension is pretty much dissolved at once. Richie seems to have that effect on awkward situations; he just says something so dumb that people can’t help but laugh with him. Eddie’s cheeks hurt from smiling. He takes another swill of his drink, flushing under the attention.

“How about you, Eddie?” Stan asks, and there’s a curious edge to his tone. 

“Myself,” he replies at once. “I’m the only one who I know is clean enough.”

Everybody around the group takes a deep drink, each of them knowing that they didn’t truthfully answer the question. Most of them, anyway. Richie keeps his gaze on Eddie as he drinks. His cup looks almost empty. 

Some of the questions are pretty tame. They go from things like _ who, in this room, would you want to trade lives with? _ to _ what colour underwear are you wearing? _and it’s safe enough that Eddie can feel himself loosening up a bit. He’s beginning to get used to the burn that swarms down his throat with each gulp of schnapps, and he finds himself pouring more and more into his cup as the volume in it depletes. 

There’s a sort of buzz in his head after a while. It’s not uncomfortable, really, but it makes him feel slightly dizzy, and it’s like there’s a ringing in his ears that he can’t turn off. It makes him tune out for a bit, when nothing interesting is going on, and he ends up staring into space. He can sort of feel himself swaying a little, too, but he doesn’t think it’s noticeable, and it’s sort of fun, so he doesn’t stop.

He doesn’t think that he’s alone in this sensation, though. Bev is giggling like mad, laying back on the couch and kicking her legs. Bill and Mike are clinking their bottles together before every sip and seeing who can drink the most in one gulp before having to come up for air. Ben is humming to himself, mostly staring at Beverly, but his fingers remain on the list of questions in his hand. Stanley seems to get even more sassy when he’s drunk, and he scoffs at everything everybody says, with no explanation. You could tell him that he was scoffing and he’d scoff at you. 

Richie is being Richie, if Richie was at x10. He’s either singing every sentence or yelling it in an over the top English accent, which isn’t exactly out of the blue, but _ fuck, _ he’s being loud. He’s slurring his speech, as well, and doesn’t seem to be holding back on the things that he’s saying. Usually, Richie has a filter. It’s a very, _ very _thin filter, but it’s there. Now, he’s saying pretty much everything that’s coming to his mind, it seems, and that apparently just consists of sexual innuendos. 

But he’s fun to watch. Eddie watches him closely, a dumb smile on his face, cup frozen halfway to his mouth. When he looks at Richie, there seems to be a blurry haze around him, like a fuzzy halo. He can’t stop looking. 

“Right!” comes the loud voice, clapping his hands together. It snaps Eddie out of his daydream, but he doesn’t have to refocus his gaze at all. “Let’s stop being _ pussies! _ Benny-Boy, ask us the good questions. The juicy questions. The _ risqué _questions.”

“Please,” Eddie groans. “Do it so that he’ll shut up.”

“Okay,” Ben says easily, and he waits for the surrounding noise to simmer down whilst scrolling through the list. Eddie wonders what kind of things he’s skipping over, purposefully ignoring. They’re all best friends, aren't they? What have they got to hide?

“Ben,” Bev whines, “Hurry up.”

“Okay, uh,” he blunders, clearly wanting to pick one only on the right side of awkward. “You wake up naked next to the last person you texted, do you say?”

Eddie doesn’t need to look. He gags into his hand, furiously shaking his head. “It’s my fucking mom!”

“Oh my god, Eds, can we switch?” Richie asks immediately. “Mine’s just Stan!”

“_ What _does that mean?” Stan complains. “What’s wrong with me?” The wine swirls around in a hypnotic circle around his glass as he rocks it back and forth. Eddie doesn’t want to think about Stan and Richie in bed together. 

“You’re locked in a room with the last person you kissed,” Ben says. He takes a deep breath. Eddie doesn’t think that anybody misses the way he looks over to Beverly. She’s looking down at her hands, picking at her nails. He continues, “Do you kiss them again, or do you hit them?”

“Hit, in what way?” Richie asks suggestively. His face fills with pink when he sees Eddie looking at him. Eddie doesn’t know why he’s suddenly gotten so flustered. 

All of them say that they would kiss them again, and Ben starts to read out the next question before Eddie or Stan say anything. He supposes that it’s because they don’t think that they’ve ever kissed anybody. He doesn’t know about Stan, but he definitely knows about himself.

“I would hit,” he says without thinking, interrupting Ben and the silence of the rest of the room.

“What?” Mike asks, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Shoot, Eddie!”

“Ch - Christ,” Bill chimes, “Wh- When did this happen?”

“Yeah, Spaghetti,” Richie adds, his eyes wide. “Why’d you wanna hit ‘em so bad, too?”

Eddie shrugs. “She can be a dumbass sometimes.”

“Why,” Richie verses, putting on a Southern-Belle accent. “Eddie-Bear, would you talk about a woman like that?”

He raises one eyebrow. “Evidently.”

“E– Eddie, seri— seriously,” Bill pushes. “Who was it? Do we kn- know– Do we know her?”

Eddie folds his arms defiantly. He’s glad that he’s not so drunk to loosen his tongue completely. “Richie does.”

“_ Sheee _ ,” he sings, swaying over towards Mike, “She’s _ gorgeous. _”

They all drop it after Eddie’s protests, but he feels hot under the collar. It’s too close for comfort. He looks to Richie for some reassurance, but he’s downing his glass. 

“Oh!” Beverly blurts suddenly, “Let’s do shots!”

She runs to the kitchen and grabs a cup for everybody who didn’t already have one, hurrying back to hand them out. She sits back down, joining them on the floor this time, in between Stan and Richie, and they shuffle over to close the circle. 

“Ben, put your phone away,” she says with a wink, pulling out her own. “Let’s play truth or dare.”

“Here’s someone who won’t hold back.” Mike chuckles nervously. 

Richie is helping Beverly pour a shot into each of the glasses. “Loosen up, Michael. We’re not gonna ask how often you bust into those socks you seem to be _ losing. _”

“Beep, beep, Richie,” Stan huffs. “That’s so disgusting.”

“What? You guys don’t have cumsocks? Oh, come on. Bev, tell me I’m not alone.”

She laughs with him, trying not to spill any vodka onto the carpet. “Oh, yeah. ‘Course I have one.”

“Beverly?” Ben says, “What kind of things are you thinking of asking?”

“Things that you aren’t expecting,” she answers promptly. She turns to him with a grin, holding out his shot for him. “It’s more fun when you have to think about your answers.”

“Who’s starting?” Stan asks. “Shall we use the bottle?”

“Good idea!” Beverly squeaks, placing a beer bottle in the middle of the circle after ensuring it was empty. “Whoever spins has to ask whoever it lands on. If you refuse to answer the truth or do the dare, you take a shot. And trust me, straight vodka is fucking disgusting.”

Eddie gulps. He can feel Bill and Ben’s nervousness either side of him as well. Everybody has secrets, he supposes. 

Beverly spins the bottle first, and he has to admit that he’s a little curious as to her devious ideas. She and Richie were ones to look out for in this game. And, he thinks, looking to her other side, Stanley. He always seems like he knows more than he lets on.

The neck of the bottle lands on Mike. He shakes his head, grinning around at his friends, before throwing up his hands and saying, “Truth?”

“Pussy!” Richie laughs.

“Shut up, Trashmouth,” Beverly scorns, elbowing him in the side. The recurrence of the nickname makes something in Eddie heat up. 

He remembers last night like a flood of hot water. Richie’s voice echoes in his head like a cave at dawn. He can still hear it, really, pressed tightly to his ear, whispering, “_ I still wanna fuck it up. Wanna get my lips all over you. Wanna know what you taste like. I want to know what you taste like everywhere. Get you down my throat. I bet I can take you real good, Eds, I bet I could, and you’d finish so fucking hard that your knees would give in. You’d really have a reason to call me trashmouth then.” _

He licks his lips subconsciously, staring down at the ground, trying to avoid the boy at the source of his excitement. He’s sure that the alcohol isn’t helping. Right now, Richie is like ambrosia; the idea of him pumping blood around his body at a rate far too fast. He can only imagine it, now. He can imagine Richie getting on his knees for him like he did vice versa this morning. He wonders whether Richie will enjoy sucking his dick as much as Eddie enjoyed getting Richie’s down his throat. It’s probably wishful thinking. But _ Christ, _it’s definitely thinking, of which he is doing far too much.

When he thinks back to their last twenty-four hours together, he thinks of _ fast _ and _ rough _ and _ spontaneous. _ Rushing to get their lips on one another; rushing to get that fucking belt open, off, to get his lips around the object of desire. 

He wants to ask Richie, in his fuddled state and muddled mind, what he thought of their time together. He wants to ask why they didn’t do anything once they found themselves in a bedroom, seldom they would actually have a suitable environment. Is it because then it would seem _ too real _? Is Richie worried? Is Richie as scared as he is? 

_ Is it more than just sexual for him, _ he wants to ask, needs to ask. Because Eddie thinks it might be more than just sexual for him. He doesn’t want to be alone. He already feels alone in being queer; he can’t be ostracised doubly, surely.

“Eds!” he hears, getting sucked back into reality. Richie’s sweet voice is piercing his eardrums, his sweet face close and sweet hand snapping its fingers in front of him. Eddie blinks once, twice, three times. The bottle is pointing at him. 

“Um,” Eddie says dumbly. He has no idea what questions have passed by without his knowing. He doesn’t know what to expect. Has anybody done a dare yet? What are the limits with those?

“You okay, Spaghetti-Head?” 

Eddie looks at Richie and can’t not focus on his lips. He nods at them.

“Who landed on me?” he asks the lips.

“Bill did,” they say.

Bill. Okay. Bill is safe. Bill won’t ask him anything embarrassing. He tears his gaze away from the lips to look at Bill.

“Truth or dare?” he asks. 

“Truth,” Eddie answers after a moment. 

Then Bill allows a smirk to cross his drink-red face, and Eddie doesn’t think he’s so safe anymore. 

“Wh— Why were you _ actually _on P- PornHub yesterday, wh- when we were walk - walking to school?” 

Eddie whines under the laughter and questioning of the group. He can’t tell the truth in response, because that would mean telling them all that he wasn’t actually on the site at all. He had been foolishly scrolling through Richie’s messages to him on Grindr. 

The prospect of coming up with a lie is too much. He grabs his shot and throws it down his throat, like they do in the movies. Almost. He forgets to open his throat, so it rests for a moment in his mouth, festering upon his tongue and burning his taste buds. He doesn’t have any idea why people would want to drink that. The burn follows the liquid down his throat and nestles in his chest, making him cough, and he flips off the circle as a whole. They’re all complaining. He doesn’t care. He did the forfeit. 

He spins the bottle then, watching it with a dizzy head. He waits, and waits, until it lands on Stanley, who is still drinking his glass of wine. He sighs, placing it down in front of him. 

“Truth.”

“What the fuck is with everybody picking truth?” Richie moans. “Come on, people! Stop being pussies!”

“Wait your fucking turn,” Stan says, “Then you can show off as much as you want.”

Eddie watches Richie’s head tilt backwards as he groans in protest. His adam’s apple bobs up, down, and up once again as he swallows. The tendons in his neck stretch and flex and he’s not sure why it’s as attractive as it is. 

“Edward,” Stanley shouts. Eddie feels a splash on his face, and he whines in disgust when he sees Stanley’s fingers dripping with red wine. 

“What the fuck?” he huffs. “Truth or dare?”

“I said truth.”

“Okay, uh… Have you ever taken nudes?”

Stan shrugs. “Obviously.” 

“Obviously!?” Eddie queries. “That’s – That’s illegal!”

“Will you take a look at what we’re doing right now?” he says, referring to the alcohol, and he drinks from his wine glass once more. 

Eddie’s head spins. Has everybody taken nudes? Has _ Richie _taken nudes? Has he sent them to men on Grindr who send them first? God knows that Eddie received enough propositions; he’d hate to see how many Richie received. 

He’s brought back from his worries by none other than Mr Tozier declaring, louder than a fucking siren, “_ Dare, bitch!” _

When Eddie says that he’s nervous, he’s usually overreacting. He wouldn’t be the first person to admit that, granted, but it still holds. He gets nervous over dumb shit that can be either easily explained or easily overcome. 

Now, when Eddie says that he’s nervous, he’s not overreacting. He’s not even normally reacting. That is the most _ deathly _ underreaction that he can seem to think of, because Richie Tozier was _ never _one to back down from a dare, no matter what it was, and the dare was coming from none other than Stanley fucking Uris. Stanley was ruthless when he wanted to be. Even more so, it seems, after he’s gotten a few drinks down his hatchet. Richie and Stanley was one of the most dangerous matches that anybody could create.

Stan had once dared Richie to moon Henry Bowers. Stan had once dared Richie to try and kiss their home room teacher. Stan had once dared Richie to _ actually _ try and make out with Eddie’s mother. The stupid fucking bastard had actually attempted all of them. 

Richie never chooses truth, either. Ever. Eddie hadn’t given it much thought before. Now, he thinks, there must have been a reason, all these years.

So, yeah. Eddie’s pretty fucking nervous. The shit-eating grin on Stan’s face doesn’t help. 

“Give somebody a hickey,” he says. His cockiness is evident in his tone, as if he _ knows _that Richie is going to refuse. 

Richie doesn’t respond for a moment. He keeps his eyes trained very hard on Stan, and then says, “Are you offering?”

“In your fucking dreams, Tozier.”

Richie looks around the circle. All at once, and apparently Eddie didn’t get the fucking memo, they chorus, “Nope,” leaving them staring at Eddie with some sick anticipation. 

“Oh, what the fuck?”

Richie is staring at him. He makes no attempt to move.

“Is R- Richie giving up a d- a dare?” Bill teases. 

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Mike adds.

Eddie meets Beverly’s eye. She frowns a little at him, and turns back to the group. She says, “Guys, come on, it’s not Eddie’s dare, is it?” 

“Eddie has a secret girlfriend, doesn’t he?” Ben asks, and he’s not jesting; it’s a serious question. 

“I don’t have a girlfriend!” he defends, and places his hands over his face. Deep breath. Two. Three. “I’ll do it if Richie’s comfortable,” he says.

Richie’s mouth drops. So does Mike’s. Bev’s eyes widen and she sucks in a breath, shifting to sit upright. Eddie doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He might have just fucked this whole thing up for the two of them. 

“S– Seriously?” comes from Eddie’s right. 

“_ All the fucking rest of you _ have to take a shot each,” he demands. “And this does _ not _leave this room. Ever. I’m fucking serious, Stanley, stop fucking laughing. And you,” he directs to Richie, who still looks like he’s acting as a guppy, “Don’t you dare put it anywhere visible. My mom would literally lock me in my room and probably cut my fucking dick off.”

Richie gulps. He’s staring at Eddie’s neck. “Are you voyeuristic fuckers just gonna watch?” he asks, trying to joke, but his throat sounds hoarse. 

“Absolutely,” Bev chuckles, sitting back, an awestruck smile stuck on her face like she can’t believe how lucky she is. 

Eddie has always been a little skeptical about how fast alcohol really kicked in, but now he’s pretty sure it’s all true. It’s probably something to do with how much he’s drank; it _ has to be, _because Eddie would never even think of doing this with Richie in front of the others if he was sober. He’s fucking closeted, for crying out loud, and so is Richie! If they let something slip — if he accidentally lets out a noise, or moves in the wrong way —

There are two hands on his shoulders. Eddie sees his reflection in double as he looks up slowly into Richie’s glasses. His expression is too serious for what Eddie is used to.

“Are you alright?” he asks him, and has Eddie never really noticed how pretty his eyes are? “Eds?”

“Sorry,” Eddie hums. “I’m okay. Just. Please don’t do it anywhere my mom will see.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, and the familiar Tozier smirk is sliding back onto his face. “I’ll make sure Mrs K doesn’t get too jealous.”

Eddie doesn’t know when Richie had gotten so close to him. Eddie’s still sat down, but Richie’s right in front of him, sitting back on his knees, accentuating the height difference between them and making Eddie feel smaller than he is. His hair is falling over his glasses and, though it isn’t a part of the dare in any way, shape, or form, Eddie feels a sudden compulsion to kiss him. Maybe it’s a side effect of being so close. 

Maybe it’s just Richie. 

He can see the acne scars on his face from this close up, and the new spots coming through. He can see the bristles of his attempted moustache coming through; the same that he’d felt upon his own face earlier that day. _ God. _Earlier that day feels like a fever dream. If he closes his eyes and focuses really hard, he can still feel the ghost of Richie’s lips against his own; his tongue slipping through his lips to dance intricacies with his own. 

Now he’s about to have his mouth on him again. An entirely new experience. He wants to slap himself, splash himself with some freezing cold water, do _ something _ just so that he can distract himself. He’s glad for Richie’s baggy shirt. He’s getting too excited; too worked up. He might have a fixation with those lips. _ Lips, lips, lips. _

He can feel breath on his collarbone as Richie pulls on the stretchy fabric. He feels exposed and a little cold but all thoughts go away as Richie slips one hand beneath the fabric, holding onto Eddie’s shoulder and keeping the shirt out of the way. He gives Eddie a sheepish smile, the type he normally gives when it’s only the two of them together, and leans in to press his _ lips lips lips _to his bare skin. 

Eddie knows that Richie hasn’t done this before. He can sort of tell by the way he’s awkwardly positioned, and he can see sweat building up near his hairline. But that’s not to say that it’s not _ good _. He likes how Richie’s mouth feels against him no matter where on his body, it seems. The only difficult part is hiding it. 

He shuts his eyes as soon as he feels the contact and hopes that that’s enough to hide his pleasure. His friends are watching them closely; he can feel their eyes burning into him, waiting, almost, for some kind of reaction. It all feels like some sort of sick test. 

Then there’s a scrape of teeth down there and, _ oh, _ that feels anything _ but _ sick. He grips onto his glass so tightly that, if he were any stronger, it might have broken in his hand. His knuckles are white, he knows. It’s probably showing. He’s probably popping a vein. All he wants to do is bury his hands in Richie’s hair and moan _ yes _ and request _ more, please more, _but there’s no way, no way whilst all of the others are there. 

The actual suction is a weird sensation. He can feel his skin getting trapped between his teeth and, as weirdly good as it is, it almost feels like Richie is going to bite a chunk out of him. 

Richie’s thumb is rubbing soothing circles onto the skin hidden by his shirt. It’s not much, but it gives Eddie comfort, makes him feel at ease. His heart is torn in the heat and the awkwardness of the moment on whether or not he wants Richie to stop because of their company, or ask him to keep going, because it does feel nice, and he knows that Richie likes it. Richie had told him. He’d told him all about how he wanted to mark up his skin and make it his own. Eddie wonders if he’ll think of Richie every time he sees the mark and wonders if Richie will appreciate his own artwork. It makes Eddie feel hot, being marked. It makes him feel, impossibly, like some parts of he and Richie are linked. Connected. It’s stupid.

When Richie pulls away from his skin, there’s a wet string of saliva still keeping them together, and Eddie can't help but frown when it breaks. He stares down at Richie’s shining lips. Richie stares at his masterpiece. He seems to like how it looks, judging by the size of his pupils. Everybody is staring at them.

“Well,” Richie says, slapping his palms to his thighs. “You bunch of perverts owe us all a shot each.”

He makes his way back to his seat in between Bev and Mike. Nobody is saying anything. Eddie keeps his head down as he places a hand over the place that’s still tingling. 

“Christ,” he continues, trying to diffuse the atmosphere. “Can you guys all go and jack off? Maybe you’ll have your shit together, then.”

“Sorry,” Ben says. The first to speak. 

Mike clears his throat. Bill whistles. Beverly is bright red. Stanley is smirking into his fucking glass of wine. 

Richie spins the bottle before anyone says anything else. Eddie’s glad for the distraction; not just for himself, but everybody else as well. Whatever the group may be thinking, it digs its claws into Eddie’s paranoia, making his heart race. They know. They totally know. They have to. Eddie would _ never _have allowed that to happen in normal circumstances. Perhaps he can chalk it up to the alcohol.

“Mikey,” Richie declares, bringing everybody's attention back. “I’m about to ask you a very difficult question, and I want you to think about this very deeply. So deep. Do it so deep.”

“Richie,” Mike laughs. 

“Truth or dare?” he asks. “Are you thinking deeply?”

“Very deep, Richie.”

“Do it deeper.”

“Fucking hell,” Stanley groans. “Do you want to bone him that bad? Seriously?”

Richie feigns a gasp. “_ Contrary _ to popular belief, I am _ not _always thinking about sex!”

“Yes, you are,” Stanley says.

“Yes, I am,” Richie concedes. 

“Alright, I choose dare,” Mike says. “I don’t want Tozier thinking he’s the only brave one here.”

Eddie bites his lip and takes a swig of the schnapps, straight from the bottle. There’s only one thing more dangerous than Richie receiving a dare; Richie _ giving _one.

“Well!” Richie grins, and it’s not one of his regular ones. This grin sends a shiver down Eddie’s spine. Not in a sexy way. It’s terrifying. (But also sort of sexy). “Since Staniel thought it was _ so funny _to watch me slobber all over Eds over here, why don’t we see how he likes it?” 

Eddie watches Stanley’s face fall like it’s in slow motion. He forces himself not to laugh. 

“What —?” Mike begins, but he has to have caught the drift by now. 

“Michael Wazowski, my one-eyed friend, I dare you to make out with our mischievous little Uris over here!”

Bev sits up once again. She and Eddie, for whatever reason, make eye contact, and he worries that they might be thinking the same thing, that _ she _thinks that they might be thinking the same thing; that this might be fucking hot. She winks at him and redirects her attention. Eddie gulps. 

“Wh- What?” Bill asks, dumbfounded. “Isn’t th- th- that a bit…”

“Too _ far?” _Stanley finishes the sentence for him and downs his glass of wine. 

“Hey, now,” Richie appeases, feigning hands coming down as though to deescalate a situation that was either caused by him anyway, or did not exist at all. “You were the one who started this. Jeez, I mean, doesn’t Eds have enough bruises on him already? You wanna see him battered all over?”

“I’m going to drink,” Stan says. He completely ignores him and reaching for the shot, only to cease his action immediately as Richie begins making slow, disturbing noises. 

“_ Bwaaaak, bwak, bwak, bwak, _ ” he mocks, bringing up his arms to his chest to imitate flapping chicken wings. “Or should I say _ meow? _You know, because you’re being a pussy?”

“So _ this _is peer pressure,” Ben jokes, leaning back against his hand. He looks amused. He doesn’t look disgusted, Eddie notes, and wonders if he can count that as a win. He doesn’t know the verdict on gay shit with the rest of the group, yet, but he figures that if they can watch Richie suck a bruise onto Eddie’s skin and Mike and Stan suck face, they must be somewhat tolerant. 

“You _ did _give Richie and I that other dare,” Eddie says, a darting bravery coming from somewhere unfamiliar. “So, you know…”

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Richie says. 

“No. That’s — That’s not at all what that metaphor means,” Eddie tells him. He turns to Stan with a bewildered expression. “Are you gonna make out or what?”

“_ Or what,” _Stanley hisses. “You can’t force Mike to —”

“Whoa,” Mike interrupts, a light chuckle in his tone. “Nobody would be forcing me to do anything. It’s all cool with me. It’s just a dare.”

Eddie’s a little envious of how easily Mike is handling it. His voice is as smooth as custard and it makes him wonder whether he’s had anything to drink at all; the rest of them have been stuttering, high-pitches sneaking their way back into their somewhat adolescent voices. But Mike is fine. Eddie wonders if he’s real.

But he turns to Stanley as the words are spoken and Eddie recognises something in his expression that the others don’t seem to. Stan’s poor face goes immediately from apprehensive to some kind of distraught. Eddie thinks that it’s because he doesn’t want to kiss Mike, at first, and then it sort of clicks. It’s not unusual to be upset by the particular wording. _ It’s just a dare. _

Eddie wasn’t supposed to see the look on Stan’s face. He’d be petrified if anybody had caught something similar on his own. But he _ did _see it; and now he knows more than he might have bargained for, even in this silly, delusional, drunken state. You can’t mistake that look.

“Wait,” Eddie says.

“Jeez, Eds, we were _ this _close!” Richie complains.

“I don’t think that they should have to do it.”

Richie frowns at him. “Why? Stan did it to us!”

“Richie,” he whispers, his eyes wide, as if he could telepathically transport the message over to him. When Richie only blankly stares back in return, Eddie sighs. He can see Stan looking at him with terror and hope in his peripheral vision. Eddie says, “It’s Stan’s first kiss, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be —” He gulps. “— Just a dare. Someone’s first kiss should be special.”

Settling silence. Stan’s simply playing with his fingers in his lap. Mike looks dumbfounded. Richie’s mouth is hanging open like he’s a fucking guppy again and he has a touch of so obvious affection in his gaze that Eddie wants to tell him to stop. 

“Eddie’s right,” Beverly says, breaking the quiet haze. “Let Stan do it in his own time.”

Stan looks like he wants to roll his eyes and remark that he’s _ not a fragile kid _but instead he says, softly, “Thank you,” and drains the rest of his wine. Eddie watches him sneak a look at Mike across the circle, but Mike’s still staring. 

“Well,” Richie says. “Now I have to think of another fucking dare, so.”

Stan snorts. “Not apologising.”

“Fair enough. Hey, Mike. Hey. I have a good truth. Why don’t you switch to truth?”

“You were _ just _complaining about people choosing truth,” Mike says back.

“Okay. And now I have humbly changed my mind due to the onset of a perfect question. Do I have thoust permission to ask thou thine question or what?”

A smile passes over Mike’s face, but his eyes keep flickering elsewhere. Eddie can’t have been the only one to notice. “Sure,” he hums. “You have my permission.”

“What was the last thing that you got off to?” 

Bill sputters into his previously neglected beer and looks up at Richie with a bemused expression. “You w- were just saying that you d- d - don’t want to know what he g- gets his r- r- rocks off to!”

“William, that was _ eons _ago, and times change like the tide!”

“It’s sti– still inv- v- vasive.”

“Then he can drink! Them’s the rules.” He slaps one hand onto Mike’s thigh. “Come on! What was it? Who was it? Wait, let me guess, it was something weird, like an HBO show, or something.” Eddie feels a chill run down his spine. They’d just come from watching _ Game of Thrones _ together. “Do you jerk it to _ Here and Now? _Is that it?”

“Richie, please, for once in your goddamn life, shut the fuck up,” Stanley deadpans. 

“It was just a video,” Mike says, shrugging. 

“I see,” Richie says, determidley _ not _ shutting the fuck up. “Fake Taxi?”

Mike shakes his head with a laugh. “Uh, it was in a library.” 

“Oh, was it Mia?”

“That’s where I’m gonna _ beep, beep _you. Sorry, Rich.”

Mike spins. He asks Bill whether anybody has ever walked in on him _ in the act _and Bill says no. He says that Georgie almost did, once, had he not had a lock on his door. 

Bill spins. He dares Beverly to prank call Greta and she does. She tells Greta (in an admittedly impressive Italian accent) that her twenty pizzas are on the way to her house and need to be paid for. Greta shouts and screams down the line before hanging up on her. They all tumble in laughter.

Bev spins. She asks Stanley what he wants his first kiss to be like. He answers that he would like to be, for lack of a better word, courted. Like people did in the old days, with flowers and love letters and fancy dates with candles._ He’s old before his time. _He adds, no doubt due to the alcohol, that he wants to feel like the birds do, when they’re wooed. 

Stan spins. He asks Ben the oldest that he’d go for and Ben blushes before sheepishly telling them twenty. Eddie doesn’t think he’d be comfortable going out with a twenty year old at seventeen. Twenty just seems so old and so far away from them right now. Sometimes, he still feels thirteen. 

Ben spins. He doesn’t let Richie choose _ dare _ this time. He asks him, after a long look at his phone, the weirdest place that he’s ever gotten off. Richie purses his lips, takes a shot of vodka. He holds up his finger when their friends begin to question him on why he doesn’t answer _ this, _ because it’s _ easy. _He doesn’t like picking truth, he tells them, doesn’t pick it for a reason. But, he says, since they’re all so interested, and as Eddie would punch him in the face if he says Sonia’s bedroom, Richie tells (only what Eddie can assume is) the truth. 

“The clubhouse,” he says, smirking. 

“_ No, _” Stanley chokes. 

“Are you fucking kidding?” Bev blusters. “The clubhouse? The clubhouse that we all share?”

“That is _ not _what I had in mind when I built it,” Ben says, and he sounds a little broken. 

“You asked!” Richie laughs. 

Mike’s shaking his head. “Any of us could have walked in and gotten scarred for life.”

“_ Or, _found out some very important truths about yourself. This dick is life-changing, baby.”

“G- Gross,” Bill says, scowling. “Why the hell d-did you do that?” 

“Duty called. Who did it hurt?”

“Our p- precious childhood m- mem- memories.”

Richie narrows his eyes at them all. Eddie’s scared. Eddie is so scared. Because _ yes, _ he knows what Richie is referring to when he says that he’s _ gotten off _ in the clubhouse, and that _ technically _means that Eddie has done it too. So when the bastard says, “You’re telling me that none of you horny assholes have ever gotten off in there?” Eddie can’t say no — when he lies, his throat closes up and his heart gets tight and his voice goes high and they’d all know anyway. 

“Of course not,” Bev says, her tone laced with amusement. “We’re not all freaks like you, Tozier.” She shoves his head lightly, warmly.

“Yeah, n- no, I haven’t even th- thought about that.” 

“Me neither.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Nope.”

Eddie stares down at the ground, hands balled into fists, scowl plastered onto his lips and pink splashed to his cheeks. They turn to him, expecting him to speak, perhaps chew Richie out about doing something so disgusting in the communal space that they cherish, maybe mention the bleach that he’s going to have to rub the place down with. He says nothing. 

Beverly coins on first. “Oh my god.”

Ben is second. “No way.”

Mike, “Wait. Eddie?”

Stanley, “_ Holy fucking shit.” _

And, at last, “E- Ed- _ Eddie?” _

Eddie slaps his hands over his face. He assumes that he doesn’t feel the bruise due to the alcohol. He’s almost completely forgotten it’s there (possibly due to the _ shame). _

“_ Aghhhh! _” Eddie groans loudly, shaking his head frantically. 

“Oh,” Richie says, grinning, but his eyes are wide like he didn’t expect Eddie to admit it. “Mr Spaghetti, how dare you?”

“You do _ not _get to freaking say shit to me!” he shouts, throwing out a pointing, accusing finger. “This is your fault! You dick!”

“It’s _ Richie’s fault _that you jerked off in our clubhouse?” Stan snorts.

“That’s — Fuck _ you, _that is not what I meant at all!”

“I’m sorry, I cannot physically picture Eddie Kaspbrak doing that underground,” Mike says.

“Please _ do not fucking picture that, _ ” he squeals. “Don’t you _ dare _picture it, what the fuck!”

“Is everyone picturing it?” Richie asks, like a fucking asshole. 

“Don’t!”

“I kind of thought that you just, _ didn’t _,” Stan hums. “I figured you would think it’s too gross. Let alone doing it in the clubhouse.”

“Of course I — Of course I do it! I’m seventeen! I’m not a freaking alien!”

Eddie grabs the vodka and takes a couple of swigs, before deciding that he absolutely _ despises this shitty piss shit. _

“Well,” Richie whispers, leaning back. A stretch of pale, skin dusted with hair reveals itself as he throws his arms behind him, his shirt having lifted several sinful inches. His jeans are hanging low. Eddie knows what’s down there. The other is still talking. “Seems that our Eddie is a bit of a dark horse.”

“N- No shit,” Bill huffs. “I- I would have expected it fr- from R- Richie, but you?”

“Whoa, whoa, Billium. What is that supposed to mean? It’s not like it’s illegal, is it?” It’s almost like Richie’s defending him. Then he says, “The actual weird part is that he was probably jerking it to some doctor/patient porn.”

Eddie doesn’t really say anything, really. Instead, he releases this kind of awkward squawk. 

“Oh my god,” Richie gasps. “I was fucking kidding.”

“_ Fuck you!” _

“Hey, hey. What happened to that no-kinkshaming rule, Trashmouth?” Bev asks, and Eddie’s drunken mind screams at him _ kink kink kink Trashmouth Trashmouth Trashmouth — taste taste lips take it You’d really have a reason to call me trashmouth then — _

He grabs a pillow from the couch behind him and hugs it to his chest in (what he hopes is) a subtle manner, bringing his knees to his chin. Richie gazes at him knowingly. At least, Eddie thinks it’s knowingly. He doesn’t actually know if Richie knows how perverted and hyperactive his fucking teenaged brain really is. 

“I stand by that,” he tells her. “Hey! What’s everybody’s favourite kink?”

“Oh, Christ,” Ben moans.

“Not exactly a common one, Benjamin, but I’ll take it.”

“I don’t know what you expect us to answer,” Stan says. “In case you haven’t noticed —”

“— I’m in a room full of fucking virgins, I get it!”

“You are full of shit, Tozier, you’re no less of a virgin than any of us.”

“Well _ that _is just wildly untrue!”

“Nobody would ever touch your dick with a ten foot pole.”

“No, no, Stan the Man, you’ve got it wrong; it’s my dick that’s ten foot, not any kind of pole. And anyway, you are still _ wrong.” _

“Richie,” Bill scoffs. “If you had had s- s - sex, you’d b- be screaming it f- from the rooft- t - tops.”

“Okay, I never said that I’ve had sex.” He’s pushing a hand through his hair, and the other is resting on the slant between his hip and his thigh. His middle finger rises and falls onto the stretched denim that is settled over his crotch. _ Tap, _ it goes. _ Tap. Tap. _Eddie’s eyes are naturally drawn there; like when you’re passing by a car crash and you can’t help but stare. Is Richie’s dick a car crash? 

“You just said you’re _ less _of one that any of us,” Mike says, laughing. “How’s that?”

“_ I,” _ Richie says, proud, cocky, “I have received a blowie. I doubt that the rest of you can say the same?”

Eddie’s eyes snap from his fingers to his face. He’s blushing again. They both are. Richie is too excited. 

“You’re such a bullshitter,” Stan says.

“I am not. Best fucking thing I ever did experience, too.”

“Really?” Ben says after a moment. 

“Swear on it.”

They contemplate this for a minute or so. Maybe two. Three. Eddie loses count. He can hardly believe his ears, really; Richie genuinely speaking about the very same blowjob that he - _ he _\- had given him was sending shivers down his spine.

Bill asks, “Wh- What was it like?” 

Richie’s eyes flicker to meet Eddie’s and Eddie can’t exactly handle it. He flickers his thumbs together and decides to stare at Richie’s fingers once again. They’ve curled up into fist on his upper thigh. They’re still so close to his dick. Eddie needs his mind to shut up.

“It was great,” he tells them. “First time for both of us, but… knew how to work it.”

“You are all such _ boys, _” Beverly complains. “I’m sure whoever it was wouldn’t want you blabbing about it to your best friends.”

“My nickname is _ literally _Trashmouth.”

_ Trashmouth fucking Trashmouth. _ Eddie wants the trashmouth around his dick. Richie is talking about how _ good he was. _The praise makes him hard. Harder than he already is. Is that possible?

Is his head still his own? It feels heavy. He may even be drooling. He wouldn’t know. 

“What time is it?” he asks them abruptly. 

Mike checks his watch. “It’s just gone midnight.”

Was it still that early? 

“Where is everyone sleeping?” Stan asks.

Ben replies, “Beverly can have the guest bedroom. Bill and I can stay in my parents’ bedroom. Two of the rest of you can go in my room, and then two of you can stay down here. I have an air mattress.”

“Eds and I are taking down here.”

“We are?”

Richie nods. He grabs his groin - adjusts himself under Eddie’s gaze. It’s such a careless movement but it sets him ablaze. 

“Stanley and I will take your bedroom then, if that’s alright, Ben,” Mike requests.

Beverly looks between them all. Her mouth is slightly agape. She’s smiling, though. “I need a smoke,” she says, and pushes herself up to head outside.

The boys watch her leave. 

“So,” Ben says, almost the second she shuts the door behind her. “Come on, Richie.”

“Y- Yeah. Tell us what it w- was like,” Bill requests. 

A smirk flickers at Richie’s lips. Those lips. 

“Maybe Bev was right, you know. Maybe I shouldn't discuss such things.”

“Yeah, right,” Mike hums. “Come on.”

“No, no, no,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m going to leave it up to your imagination. But I’ll say this; it is a damn sight better than any of you virgins are ready for.” 

*

Eddie doesn’t know how much longer they all stay up for. Beverly returns to blushing faces and rolls her eyes at them all. They discuss things that they perhaps wouldn’t whilst in their right minds. Sex. Drugs. (_ Rock and Roll, _ Richie would say _ ). _They discuss Derry. First kisses. (Eddie dies a little bit inside as he avoids their interrogation of him). 

But they all scatter, after a while. Eddie can feel the heavy buzz still in his head. He says night-night to his friends and hugs each one of them before they leave. He doesn’t know why. It’s dangerous, all things considered. 

Richie slams the door to the lounge shut after Stanley leaves, trailing after Mike with elated trepidation. In the back of Eddie’s mind, he’s reminded of his earlier realisation, and he silently prays to whatever Gods that are out there that sharing a bed with Mike goes well for the poor bastard. 

But Eddie barely has time to put his hands together when Richie is crowding him against the wall, his urgent finger tilting up his chin. He can see the dirt on his glasses from this close up and if he weren’t so startled then he would already have his hands all over him. 

“Eds,” Richie whispers to him, all red and pushing through the embarrassment. “You have no fucking idea what I’ve been through tonight.”

“I think I might,” he replies. “You were doing it on purpose.”

He smirks. “Doing what?”

“Bringing up sexual shit! I can’t believe that you brought up that you’ve had a blowjob. Seriously?”

Richie laughs, his fingers kissing Eddie’s jaw. He says, “How am I not meant to brag about that? If you had half an angel sucking your dick, you’d shout it from the rooftops, too.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Half?”

“Well, I can’t lie to you, Eds. You can be a beast sometimes. You and your tiny little pout and angry eyes.”

“Shut up,” he says. “I don’t pout.”

Richie kisses him. Eddie’s body had clearly realised before he did how desperate that he was for this — his eyes flutter shut on instinct and he lets his head be tilted by the other boy’s hand, chasing the kiss and aching for more. 

Richie’s lips are soft, like his hair. Eddie’s fingers slide through the locks like it’s second nature for him. There’s something about those curls that he just can’t get enough of, and it’s difficult to explain what it is that has him so hooked. His nose is knocking against the glasses and smudging them up even more, he can feel it, but it’s the last thing that he’s worried about, and he honestly doubts that Richie does either. Eddie’s not sure how he ever sees anything. It’s a wonder how he looks at him the way he does when he should technically be blind. 

His back is against the wall, and then not, and then again, as he leans up and in before Richie pushes him back, like clockwork. It’s something about the way that Richie handles him, maybe, that gets him so hot. He uses his height to his advantage and as much as he _ hates _how much shorter he is compared to the rest of their gang — he likes it with Richie. Maybe he likes fucking everything with Richie. 

He doesn’t act like he hasn’t been waiting for this all night too. He’s first to enact on their tongues, this time, not shying back, breaching Richie’s pretty lips and liking the noise that he makes in return. He remembers the noises that he made when Eddie’s mouth was elsewhere and impulsively bucks his hips upwards, grinding against Richie’s hips. 

“_ Oh,” _Richie whispers in turn, his breath hot against Eddie’s now wet mouth. “Eddie, baby, you’re killing me.”

“I’ve been like this all night,” he tells him rawly, pressing forwards. He pulls down on his head, trying to kiss him again. Richie smiles at his eagerness.

“I saw you get the - the pillow,” he says, trying to speak over Eddie’s mouth. “_ Mmf, _you’re eager.”

“I’m fucking — _ yes, _I’m eager!”

“Good. I think vodka makes me horny.”

“Everything makes you horny.” 

“Baby, don’t hit it where it hurts!” he whines, and then, “Do you know how much I like you wearing my shirt?”

“Yes,” Eddie replies, and reaches to pull it up and over his head. He throws it somewhere in the direction of the television. But —

If there’s one thing that Eddie has had to get used to over the past couple of years (for numerous reasons), it’s that his hearing has had to become impeccable. Sensing the presence of an oncoming threat has been a growing skill. He’s grateful for it — especially for times such as these.

“Someone’s coming!” he whispers harshly, pushing Richie away from him so that he topples back onto the couch. He looks so startled for a second, before he’s slapping his hand to his mouth to muffle his laughter.

The door opens as Eddie rushes to pick up his shirt again. He holds it in front of him, hanging down to cover his crotch. Ben appears, pyjama clad, rubbing his eyes. 

“Hey, guys,” he says. He’s not swayed at all by Eddie’s lack of dress. “Sorry. We couldn’t find the air mattress. Do you guys mind sleeping on the couches?”

“Not at all! I’m calling the big one, though.”

“On what fucking grounds?” Eddie asks.

“Size accordance, little man.”

“Screw you, dickwad.”

“Have I ever told you that you should be a poet?”

Ben chuckles at the both of them, shaking his head. “There are blankets under the TV. Eddie, there’s mouthwash in the downstairs bathroom, but I don’t have any spare toothbrushes, sorry.”

Eddie smiles. “Thanks, Ben.”

“Cheers, Haystack!” Richie declares, his cockney accent flaring through again. “Oi, how many cavities d’ya fink Spaghetti will get from a night wiv’out brushing?”

“Shut up. I hate you,” Eddie says without malicion, but he brings a hand up to rub at his jaw anyway. 

“Aw, I love you too, honey. Benny, will you be my best man?” 

“Please try and make it to the bathroom if you need to throw up all of that alcohol,” Ben says instead of dignifying Richie with a response. “Night, guys.”

“Night, Ben.”

“G’dnight, darlin’!”

The door clicks shut. Eddie listens to the _ thunks _of Ben’s footsteps going up the stairs before he holds back a smile at Richie, who is holding his arms out and making grabby hands at him. 

“Come ‘ere,” he coos, and he’s the one pouting now.

“Wait. I’m going to get the mouthwash for us both.”

“_ Ughh. _ Why? I taste of vodka with vague hints of puke. I, _ personally, _would consider that an aphrodisiac.” 

“That’s so disgusting,” Eddie tells him.

They gargle the mouthwash together and Eddie almost swallows his when Richie tries to squirt some at him from his mouth. He brings it back with him to the lounge once they’re done with it, choosing to ignore the shit-eating grin that Richie gives him.

They fight with each other in the race over who can get back down the hallway first. Eddie wins (though he thinks that Richie lets him) and places the mouthwash next to the couch. 

“What are you humming?” Eddie asks, sitting himself down onto the couch and throwing his legs across it. “It sounds like you’ve been sucked back to the 1940s or something.”

“What?” Richie asks, pausing his rendition. He sits down on the arm of the couch to grin down at him, and says, “You don’t think I’d make a pretty suffragette?”

“Pretty sure that wasn’t the same time period, but, yeah, I don’t.” 

“You wound me, baby,” he huffs, and reaches down to place a hand on Eddie’s bare leg before beginning to hum again.

Eddie eyes the hand. Richie had fantasised about his legs, before. Richie had told him that. Eddie wonders whether he’s fantasising about them now. 

“Seriously,” he says, “What’s that tune?”

Richie looks down, kicking his legs. His smile is less teasing now. 

“_ Eddie my love _ ,” he sings quietly, “ _ I love you so.” _

He rolls his eyes, but he’s blushing. “Fuck. That’s so cheesy.”

Richie laughs with him, swirling his finger on Eddie’s leg. “_ How I’ve waited for you, you’ll never know.” _

Eddie doesn’t have any more words. He takes a deep breath, wishing there was a shirt on him to hide his face in. He can’t imagine how red he must look. He’s appreciative of the dark lighting. Richie slides from the arm of the couch, settling both of his knees either side of Eddie’s legs. 

“_ Please Eddie, don’t make me wait too long.” _

“You’re the one making me wait,” he says back. He wants to touch him, but he’s just out of his reach. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. 

“I am? I’m not the one who made you drink a shit-ton of boneless toothpaste.”

“Please stop calling mouthwash boneless toothpaste.”

“Sorry, listerine. Oh my god! That’s your superhero name.”

“That would _ not _be my superhero name.”

“It’s better than _ Shazam. _”

“_ Shazam _is a great hero, shut up.”

Richie’s gaze is warm on him, scattering across his face, torso, lower. He leans down, his hands now either side of Eddie’s head. His minty-fresh breath is jittery on his face. 

“I really liked giving you that hickey,” he murmurs. 

Eddie nibbles on his lower lip. “I liked it too. I could barely stop myself from saying anything.”

“I could hear how heavy you were breathing.” He’s eyeing the love bite under his collarbone now, breathing heavily himself. He says, “Could feel your heartbeat on my lips.”

Eddie lets out a whimper for no reason in particular other than enjoying the sound of his voice and the proximity of their faces. Richie’s glasses are sliding down his nose, now, whether it’s just from sweat or gravity, Eddie’s not sure. 

He raises his legs and wraps them around Richie’s waist, yanking him down closer. He wants their bodies flush. He wants every bit of him to touch every bit of Richie, head to toe. He couldn’t think of anything better. 

“Eddie,” he mumbles. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?”

“From me. Now. And, I, uh, guess, in the foreseeable future. Wh- What would — What do you want me to be?”

Eddie gazes at him. He lifts a hand, gently placed his palm to Richie’s cheek. He tells him, “Be as you’ve always been,” and Richie just stares back at him for a moment. When he kisses him again, it’s without fire but still filled to the brim with warmth and familiar love and — Eddie is doomed.

He plays with the curls on the back of the other boy’s head as the two of their mouths meld together. If Richie’s hands weren’t holding him up then Eddie would like to think that they’d be all over him, caressing his jaw and his body and more. His hands are one of Eddie’s favourite features and, he thinks with a note of embarrassment and bashfulness, what more he could do to Eddie with his fingers. 

Would they go that far? He had dreamt of it, two, three, maybe four _ (five, six, seven) _ times; Richie going down _ there _and breaching his walls with those long fingers and maybe more. Definitely more. He’d had that dream more than seven times; bent over a desk or pressed against a wall or softly lain against a king-sized bed. 

He hums into Richie’s mouth as a tongue heads into his own. He pushes his hips upwards again, and whilst he can feel his own erection against Richie’s abdomen, he can feel Richie’s against his behind. He can feel how aroused he is, and as their lower bodies meet, he can hear Richie’s own groans. They’re both thinking the same thing. Eddie can tell. 

A tongue slides against his own and they circle in unison. It’s almost so crude that Eddie wants to shy away from it; he’s sure that if he saw that in the street (or even in _ porn) _it would make him cringe. But it doesn’t, not now; not even the vulgar noises that it produces. 

He wants to complain when Richie ends the slick kiss until his lips reattach themselves to his jaw, this time. His mouth kisses and nips at the skin on his jawline to his neck and Eddie doesn’t have the time nor the sense to even begin to think about scorning him for the possibility of leaving bruises. He hangs his head back in delight, mouth jerking open, allowing huffs and puffs quietly leave him in lieu of not being able to moan. They need to keep quiet, but Eddie’s not sure if Richie is going to make that easy for him. 

Whilst Eddie keeps himself busy with nestling his fingers through black, fluffy hair, Richie adjusts his position, moving his knees to sit more comfortably. He leans back, much to Eddie’s dismay, and kisses a line down his arm as it reaches out for him. Sitting up, he looks miles bigger than Eddie, and he basically squeaks when Richie grabs his hips and pulls them up to rest on his lap. It’s an awkward position; Richie’s dick is quite literally right against the curve of his ass, and Eddie’s back is arched, curved over his sitting thighs, head still on the couch. He’s going to have killer backache tomorrow, he can tell, but for now, he’s more than content. 

Richie rolls his hips forwards. It’s like he’s testing it out. And then he does it again, and again, until it’s a steady rhythm of thrusts. Only their fabric separates them. 

“Is this okay?” Richie asks. “This — This feels good.” 

Eddie nods fervently. He can’t feel anything physically arousing like this, but the very idea of Richie just rutting against him to get himself off is so titillatingly sexy that he can’t refuse - he wouldn’t even dream of it. This is about ten of Eddie’s fantasies rolled up into one. 

Richie begins to set himself a pace to follow, jutting his hips forward whilst dragging Eddie’s back to meet him. Judging by the look on Richie’s face, he’s enjoying it; his bottom lip is caught between his teeth and it looks like he’s forcing his eyes to stay open. His gaze never leaves Eddie once, like he’s desperate to watch him. Eddie wants to give him a show. 

He lifts his hand and dips it into his shorts, grabbing hold of his dick and allowing his eyes to flutter shut at the contact. It’s like he doesn’t even need to move his arm – Richie is rocking into him so that his body is moving along in turn. He gets jerked back and forth by the thrusts that keep coming, only having to keep his hand still whilst his dick moves in his fist. 

From this angle, when he opens his eyes once more, he can’t help but notice how vividly sexual the position is; as if Richie could slip and fall into having sex with him at any time. He wonders if that’s what Richie’s imagining as he looks down on him, his thrusts moving his body almost like a doll. 

“It looks like you’re fucking me,” he says on a whim. He remembers Richie’s words from when Eddie was on top of him, clear as day: _ You look like you’re about to ride me. _If this is what he looked like, Eddie can’t blame Richie for being so transfixed on the image. 

“Yeah?” he replies, speech heavy with breath. “Well, it looks like I’m fucking you from up here, too.”

He half expects the other boy to make a joke like _ how’s the weather down there? _But he doesn’t. Eddie’s not sure whether he’s relieved or if he’s let down — as much as he says he hates his humour, he does know how to make him laugh. 

“Tell me,” Eddie requests, like they’re back to talking over the freaking phone again. “Tell me how you would wanna fuck me.”

“Shit,” is the response, deep and rough and almost absentminded. Eddie can feel the fingers tighten on his hips. “Would wanna — Wanna have you in every damn position that there is.”

“Which first?” he asks. The grip on his dick gets tighter. 

“First, I want to have you like this. I want you facing me. I need to see your face when I – When I start to f- _ fuck _you. Put your legs around my waist like this, or push them up to your chest. I know you’re flexible.”

Richie has sweat actually trickling down his forehead. He lets his mouth hang wide open as his thrusts become deeper, like he’s actually trying to breach Eddie’s shorts and his underwear. He watches Eddie’s hand like a hawk, watches how it rises and falls on his dick. He wonders whether Richie’s mind works in the same way his own does: astounded at the fact that they can both purely be aroused because of the other’s arousal. 

“Take off your jeans,” Eddie demands. Richie freezes for a second. “Come on. I know your dick hurts. Jeans are fucking torture.”

Richie complies, unzipping and kicking off the denim before gazing in amazement as Eddie does the same with his shirts. They sit, both in their underwear (though Richie’s shirt remains on him), panting as they just look at one another. Eddie can never remember appreciating a human’s thighs more than at this very moment. There are sparse freckles that he can only see from this close and dusted hair that feels soft under his palm and — He hadn’t even realised that he had reached out to touch him. 

The lips that approach him now are fast again, and they come accompanied by a hand that slides up his stomach and to his chest, pausing for but a second to ghost over Eddie’s nipple. It slips back down, then, but the contact is enough to surprise Eddie into a gasp against the eager lips. A tongue slides into his mouth as the fingers slide back, gently circling the areola. Eddie doesn’t know why the action sends electricity down his spine, or why it makes him buck his hips up on impulse. 

Richie smiles into the kiss. It makes him smile back before the fingers turn to pinch his nipple and it turns quickly into another gasp. He’s seen people do this before, in videos, but he never suspected that it _ actually _felt good. And even if he had, he would have assumed that that was reserved for women. But this — He moans into the kiss and grabs a handful of Richie’s shirt, tugging on it and wishing it off.

“That’s good,” Eddie hums, pausing to breath against his cheek. “Oh, shit, fuck, _ fuck, _touch me more, will you?”

“So demanding.” 

Richie touches him more, though. The one hand stays on his chest whilst the other hurries to untuck both of their dicks from their underwear, one large hand wrapping around the both of them in a way that makes Eddie hiss. The sensation of both the long fingers around his own and the other dick sliding up alongside it is almost too much. 

“You like that?” he asks in a teasing tone. “You like Richie’s dick?”

“Oh, shut u- _ uhhhp _ —” Eddie groans, wanting to feel pissed at the way that Richie _ totally fucking moved his hand to stop him from yelling at him. _But he can’t be, not when the pad of Richie’s index finger is massaging the tip of his dick, getting itself sticky on purpose. 

“You don’t like Richie’s dick?” he asks, sticking out his bottom lip. He thrusts his hips forward, sliding his own against Eddie’s. “That makes Richie sad.”

“_ Nn — _ Richie, _ fuck.” _

“That’s his name!” he declares.

“Stop talking about yourself in third p – person, you – _ ah! – _you weirdo.”

“But, I—”

“Just, you know, _ stop talking! _” 

He pulls him down for another kiss, melding their lips together. It’s partly to shut him up and partly just because he wants to and for once, there’s nothing stopping him from doing it. If he’d known all this time that this was the quickest way to make Richie _ Trashmouth _Tozier shut up, he would have tried it a long time ago. 

Eddie digs his teeth into the other’s bottom lip and hums against him. There’s a tug on their dicks again and Eddie can’t help but bite down harder on impulse, and he can taste hints of blood in his mouth but neither of them seem to give a fuck. Richie’s fist is moving faster now, bringing a sense of urgency to Eddie’s gut. 

“I’m close,” he pants, tearing himself away from the ludic kiss for just a moment. When Richie nods, he kisses him again, and the taste of the mouthwash has almost worn off now. Now, he tastes like nothing but skin and tongue and lips and it’s so human and so real and so _ Richie. _He whines when their tongues circle around each other as their dicks slide up, down, up, a rhythm that has him in pieces, both aforementioned parts of him slick with different fluids. 

Richie’s glasses fall off and hit his face, and neither of them care even now. It feels easier this way; there’s more room for Eddie to move his face, so he does, tilting his head this way and that to explore a new avenue of angles that go straight to his dick. He can feel it coming. He can feel —

“_ Oh,” _he gasps, involuntarily jerking his hips in an awkward kind of spasm, and he can feel his toes curling in, his grip on his hair tightening and the cafuné rippling into something more immediate. 

“Shit,” Richie whispers, his gaze hot (even though Eddie is sure that he can’t see jack-all right now without his glasses), and his grip on them both getting wetter and faster. “Shit, fuck, _ fuck, _ Eds, Eddie, Eddie, baby, _ fuck!” _

Richie finishes first. Eddie doesn’t understand the emotion that makes him feel but it certainly makes him feel _ something _ because he feels his orgasm arrive almost immediately after. He feels splashes over his stomach, warm and sticky, and he would normally be disgusted by such a thing. He’s not, now. _ Maybe it’s because it’s Richie. _

They ride it out together. There’s a mingling of their heavy breathing and Eddie can tell that Richie is struggling to keep himself from falling on top of him. Maybe it’s to keep the liquid from getting all over his shirt, or maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to crush Eddie underneath him. 

“Did we make any noise?” Eddie asks quietly. 

Richie snorts. It’s impossible to not tell that he’s out of breath when he answers, “Yes.” 

“Wait. Fuck. Really? _ Fuck! _We were loud?!”

“Define _ loud _ and I might have you an answer.”

“Richie.”

“Hey, Spaghetti?”

Eddie can’t even be annoyed by the nickname. He’s just glad that Richie doesn’t call him _ Spaghetti _during sex. He says, “Yes?”

“What’s louder than a tractor?”

“You?”

“Nope.”

“If you say _ two tractors, _I’m going to push you off of this couch.”

“You’re so romantic, Eddie, my love.” He begins to hum the song once again, smile clad on his face as he stands up. He holds out a hand, the hand that had just been wrapped around the two of them, and Eddie takes it (with only a _ tiny _bit of hesitation — what’s wrong with some hand sanitizer sometimes?). 

Richie leads him to the bathroom again and kisses him whilst he washes the semen off of Eddie’s stomach. He sucks on his neck whilst Eddie dries himself off and he nibbles on the mark he leaves when Eddie makes him wash his hands. Their fingers intertwine under the stream of hot water, washing the suds away. Richie is pressed to his back, his arms around Eddie’s waist. 

Richie’s fingers tease his skin when they head back down the corridor, hushed voices and soft footsteps, and when Eddie pulls him in for another kiss halfway there, he graciously accepts it and presses him gently against the wall. Neither of them think of their company upstairs, who could pop down at any given moment. The world is reserved to the air surrounding them. Eddie can’t remember if anybody else even exists. 

They kiss for what feels like a couple of years, the couch acting as a cloud in their heaven, and Eddie’s never felt so elated in his life. He feels stupid, in a weird sort of way. He always used to yell at the television when teenagers thought they were in love. He thought they were foolish. But now… Now he kind of understands it. 

Holy fuck. Is he in love with Richie?

In hindsight, he should have seen it coming. He’s probably felt this way for years. 

“Richie?” he says, face nuzzled in Richie’s chest, rubbing his thumb over a patch of his skin whilst his other hand gets squeezed. 

“Mm?” comes the groggy response. Eddie doesn’t blame him. They’re both half-asleep.

“Will you be my boyfriend?” 

There’s a moment or two of quiet, before Richie kisses the top of his head. “It feels like we have been.”

Eddie smiles. “Yeah. It does.” 

*

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but waking up is a dream. He can’t remember ever feeling so … warm, and happy. Waking up isn’t usually like this. Waking up is usually filled with anxiety and _ where’s ma _ and _ hide the phone. _ Now, all he feels is _ Richie Richie Richie. _

He rolls over, takes a deep breath of a smell that is so distinctly his – his _ boyfriend, _and he wraps his arms around him, throwing his leg over too (just because he can). When he leans up, he presses a litter of kisses to the nearest bare skin he can find — it feels like his neck. 

“Having a nice dream?” 

Eddie laughs quietly in response, opening his eyes for the first time this morning and not holding back his grin. Richie has his glasses on already, but his hair is wild and he’s looking down at him like he’s the moon. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “It was beautiful.” 

“Good,” he replies, and his eyes flicker upwards. For a moment, he’s frozen, and then Eddie can feel his heartbeat flutter to ten thousand beats per minute. 

And then, a _ smash _of something falling to the ground from the doorway. 

Eddie freezes. He can’t look up. Nobody says a word — he’s not even sure who’s actually there. If he’s lucky, it’ll just be Stanley, who may remember the small mercy that he’d given him last night. 

“Well,” Richie says. “Good morning, Scooby Gang. I swear we have a totally heterosexual explanation for this.” 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you again for reading, i hope you enjoyed!  
if you would like to leave kudos or a comment to lmk if u enjoyed it would mean the world to me :> i respond to each and every one!!
> 
> (also i wish i just made this fic a couple of words shorter... 24k... ahhhh)
> 
> come talk to me on twitter @greyclouding !


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